How big is the difference between sitting and standing? A cultural universe, when you examine posture in the context of food preparation. In the kitchens of the West, the cook stands at a table or counter and uses a knife. But mention a kitchen to a Bengali, or evoke a favorite dish, and more often than not an image will surface of a woman seated on the floor, cutting, chopping, or cooking. In the Indian subcontinent, especially in its eastern region of Bengal, this is the typical posture. For centuries, the Bengali cook and her assistant have remained firmly grounded on the kitchen floor, a tradition reflecting the paucity of furniture inside the house. A bed for both sleeping and sitting was usually the most important piece of furniture, but outside the bedroom people sat or rested on mats spread out on the floor, or on squares of carpet called asans. In the kitchen they often sat on small rectangular or square wooden platforms called pinris or jalchoukis, which raised them an inch or so above the floor.

From this closeness to the earth evolved the practice of sitting down both to prepare and to cook food. Enter the bonti, a protean cutting instrument on which generations of Bengali women have learned to peel, chop, dice, and shred. Despite the recent incursion of knives, peelers, graters, and other modern, Western-style kitchen utensils, the bonti is still alive and well in the rural and urban kitchens of Bengal.

A Bengali lexicon compiled by Jnanendramohan Das reveals that although the term bonti has been in the Bengali language for many years, it actually derives from the language of the ancient tribal inhabitants of the eastern regions of the subcontinent. Das traces the word bonti back to ancient Bengali narrative poems, such as Ghanaram Chakrabarti’s poem “Dharmamangal,” composed during the reign of Dharma Pala (775 to 810 a.d.), the second ruler of Bengal’s Pala Dynasty. In his definitive history of Bengal, Bangalir Itihash, the historian Nihar Ranjan Ray presents compelling evidence of the proto-Australoid peoples who settled Bengal long before the Aryans came to India and whose language, customs, and ritualistic beliefs still permeate the cultural life of Bengal. Ray also notes that Buddhist terracotta sculptures from the days of the Pala dynasty depict people using the bonti to cut and portion fish.

Nineteenth-century Kalighat painting of a woman cutting a whole fish, possibly a carp, on a bonti. Courtesy of Biswaranjan Sarkar, Calcutta

Basically, the bonti is nothing more than a curved blade rising out of a narrow, flat, wooden base. Sometimes the blade is mounted on a small iron tripod to increase its height. Its versatility comes from the many different types and sizes of both blade and base, as well as from the various uses to which it is put. The bonti’s uniqueness comes from the posture required to use it: one must either squat on one’s haunches or sit on the floor with one knee raised while the corresponding foot presses down on the base. As in other “floor-oriented” cultures, such as Japan, the people of Bengal were accustomed to squatting or sitting on the floor for indefinite periods of time. An 1832 volume by Mrs. S.C. Belnos, Twenty-four Plates Illustrative of Hindoo and European Manners in Bengal, depicts a Bengali kitchen complete with utensils and a woman seated in front of a low stove, cooking. The author comments: “Their furniture consists of low beds, small stools, a chest or two, perhaps an old-fashioned chair on which the master sits with his legs crossed under him, a Hookah of cocanut [sic] shell on a brass stand…” Even today, in rural Bengal where many cottages are sparsely furnished, people—especially men—squat comfortably on porches or under large shade trees as they smoke and chat. Only after the European presence was well established later in the nineteenth century did the living room or dining room equipped with couches, chairs, and tables become part of the ordinary Bengali home.

The bonti also appears in Kalighat paintings, a body of indigenous works produced in the vicinity of the Kalighat Temple, built in 1829 on the banks of the river Hooghly (a branch of the Ganges) in Calcutta. As Calcutta grew under British rule, and its Bengali residents developed a semidecadent “babu” culture, the Kalighat painters focused their attention on urban, rather than the canonic rural, life.

To use a knife of any size or shape, the cook must bear down with one hand on the item being cut, at the same time holding the food with the other hand to prevent it from slipping. But unlike the more familiar knife, the bonti uses horizontal, rather than vertical, force. The cook positions herself in front of the tool, one foot pressed firmly against the wooden base. She then uses both hands to slide the vegetable, fruit, fish, or meat against the curving blade that faces her. To those used to working with a knife, the delicacy with which the rigidly-positioned blade cuts seems miraculous: it peels the tiniest potato, trims the tendrils from string beans, splits the fleshy stems of plants, chops greens into minute particles for stir-frying, and even scales the largest fish. At the great fish markets, as in Calcutta, fishmongers sit tightly packed as they dismember giant carp and hilsa (a type of shad) on huge, gleaming bontis, all the while engaging in jocular repartee about who has the better fish.

Like knives, bontis come in many different sizes, with blades varying in height, width, and shape. Women using the instrument at home generally have two medium-sized bontis, one for cutting vegetables, the other for fish and meat (the animal products collectively known as amish). This separation of vegetarian and non-vegetarian food was rigidly practiced in all traditional Hindu homes until fairly recently and led to the term ansh-bonti for the tools used to cut fish or meat (ansh means “fish scale”). Professional cooks dealing with large volumes of food use considerably heftier bontis than the housewives. Their ansh-bontis must be strong enough to cut a twenty- or thirty-pound carp, and the blades are proportionately wider and higher. The bonti blade is generally made of iron rather than stainless steel, and it tends to rust if not immediately dried. Repeated use blunts the blade, so itinerant experts roam the cities with special gear for sharpening bontis and knives.

An interesting blade is found on the kuruni, a bonti used for the specific purpose of grating coconuts. In this type of bonti, the blade curves out of the wooden base in the usual way, but its tip is crowned with a round, serrated piece of metal. The cook sits in front of the kuruni with the front end of its base on a woven mat or tray, or even on a piece of newspaper. Holding one half of a fresh coconut in both hands, she scrapes it with circular motions against the metal disk as the coconut flesh rains down in a stream of white.

Such are the day-to-day uses of the bonti in the Bengali kitchen. But as with any implement with a long history, this tool is endowed with a wealth of associations reaching far beyond the mundane. Although professional male chefs use the bonti, it is inextricably associated with Bengali women, and the image of a woman seated at her bonti, surrounded by baskets of vegetables, is a cultural icon. Holding the vegetable or fish or meat in both hands and running it into the blade makes the act of cutting a relatively softer, gentler motion than the more masculine gesture of bringing a knife down with force on a hard surface: The food is embraced even as it is dismembered.

In the days when most Bengalis lived in extended, multi-generational families, women had to make large meals every day. Usually the elderly grandmother or widowed aunt was responsible for cutting the vegetables, while the younger women took on the more arduous task of cooking over the hot stove. This ritual of cutting, called kutno kota, was almost as important as the daily rituals carried out for the household gods. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve sitting near my grandmother on the floor of the large central space in her Calcutta house as she peeled and sliced the vegetables for the day’s main afternoon meal. A grand array of shapes and colors surrounded her: purple and greenish-white eggplants; green-and-white striped patols (a favorite gourd-like vegetable); leafy greens of the noteshaak with their fleshy, rhubarb-like stems; yellow crescents of pumpkin; pale-skinned potatoes. During holidays and school vacations I always sat and watched my grandmother at the bonti…

She takes a long, purple eggplant and dexterously halves it against the blade, then starts cutting one of the halves into smaller pieces. I pick up the remaining half and inspect the white, seed-studded flesh. Something is moving. A worm, secretly embedded in the flesh, is now forced into the open. What kind of insect is it, I ask my grandmother, what kind of insect lives hidden inside the eggplant and what does it eat? She smiles at me, takes the eggplant from my hands and cuts off the infested portion. Then she embarks on a story from an ancient Hindu text about a king who lived inside a glass palace without any openings, to protect himself from the wrath of the snake king who had become his sworn enemy. But one day, when the king bit into a mango, a tiny worm came out from inside the flesh and within seconds was transformed into a huge serpent that stung him to death. I look at the still-crawling worm in the discarded bit of eggplant with new respect…

The woman at the bonti, however, is not always an
elderly narrator. The young, nubile daughter of the family
and the newly-married bride sitting at the bonti are also part
of Bengali iconography. As she joyfully manipulates food against the versatile blade, the young woman epitomizes feminine abilities. When marriages were arranged in rural Bengal, the bridegroom’s family would come to look over the prospective bride, asking to see her kitchen skills and noting how well she could chop with the bonti. In the southern district of Barisal in Bangladesh, it was not enough for a prospective bride to chop just any vegetable. Her future in-laws often demanded that she sit at the bonti and cut a bunch of koloishaak, the leafy greens of the legume khesari daal, whose fibrous leaves and stem have to be chopped very fine before stir-frying. The ideal bride had to be able to reduce the resistant bunch into minute particles of green. Yet handling the bonti well had another advantage in Barisal. The local women used their bontis to defend themselves and their homes against gangs of armed robbers who attacked prosperous homesteads when the men were away.

Bengali literature contains many references to another,
less domestic aspect of the woman at the bonti. Recurring
images portray her as young and demure, sitting with her
head bent, concentrating on her hands as she moves the vegetable
or fish toward the lethal blade. Often a married woman
is pictured, her head modestly covered with the shoulder end
of her sari, whose colorful border frames her face and hair.
But the discreet posture and modest covering are a foil for a
flirtatious element in extended family life, which offers virtually
no privacy. Men—whether a husband or a romantic
interest—can expect many eloquent, sidelong glances cast
with surreptitious turns of the head as the woman goes about
her domestic tasks with the bonti.

An extension of this mild titillation is found in Shobha, a fascinating album of photographs by Gurudas Chattopadhyay published around 1930. His photographs portray some of Calcutta’s best-known prostitutes and are obviously intended for erotic stimulation. But this is no collection of Playboy-like nudes. Instead, each woman has been photographed fully clothed and seated before a bonti! Here is a study in body language: the straight back, the bifurcated legs (one crossed, the other raised), the coy eyes peeking out from under the sari covering the head. To the Bengali viewer/voyeur of the time, the bonti, by enforcing this posture, created a uniquely erotic vision of the female figure, rich in implication and suggestiveness.

Despite its long history, it is probably inevitable that in the new global century the bonti will eventually vanish. The kitchens of Bengal are rapidly changing. Knives rather than bontis are becoming the cutting implements of choice. Tables and countertops are triumphing over the floor; chairs, tables, and couches are becoming as integral to the home as its doors and windows. Women no longer live in extended families, nor do their mornings consist of the leisurely ritual of kutno kota, when several women worked together, forming a sisterhood of the bonti. Now women are likely to work outside the home, which leaves little time for that kind of domestic fellowship. But for those of us who remember, the bonti will continue to be a potent symbol of multi-faceted femininity.

fundamentals
The Bengali Bonti | Chitrita Banerji

politics
“GM or Death”: Food and Choice in Zambia | Christopher M. Annear

organized crime
The Egg Cream Racket | Andrew Coe

memoir
The Unbearable Lightness of Wartime Cuisine | Alma Marin

semantics
The Disappearance of Hunger in America | Patricia Allen

antipathies
Can’t Stomach It: How Michael Pollan et al. Made Me Want to Eat Cheetos | Julie Guthman

investigations
A Short History of MSG: Good Science, Bad Science,and Taste Cultures | Jordan Sand
Feeding the City | Gregory Alexander Donofrio
Was the Taco Invented in Southern California? | Jeffrey M. Pilcher
Cheese Cultures: Transforming American Tastesand Traditions | Heather Paxson
“In Bacteria Land”: The Battle over Raw Milk | Anne Mendelson

forum
Food Porn | Anne E. McBride

Food is complicated nourishment that feeds more than the belly. As recent events in Zambia have shown, it has the capacity to make (or break) relationships before even a morsel is raised to lips. Last year Zambian president Levy Patrick Mwanawasa sparked international controversy when he banned genetically modified (GM) foods from entering Zambia, including in the form of famine aid. Since then, contentious debate has ensued that transcends questions regarding the relative virtue of GM foods, both in terms of nutritional safety and geoeconomic prudence. The potency of President Mwanawasa’s words and the strong international, almost exclusively Western, repudiations to his declaration reveal a tenuous relationship between African and Western donor countries over the topics of food aid and food values. What he has shown, in effect, is that food can constitute political poison even when gastronomically edible.

Mwanawasa’s GM food remarks drew—perhaps even courted—criticism from beyond the borders of his midsized south-central African country for his purported insensitivity to the food needs of his own people. Due to the effects of El Niño on the past two growing seasons (2001, 2002), southern Africa has been reported to be a virtual famine zone. Therefore, the posited relationship between food and affected African countries is often discussed as if it were linear and axiomatic: the hungry continent requires food, any food. In this article I discuss the paradox that, on the one hand, debate is encouraged concerning the possible health risks of certain foods for people who can buy it; yet, on the other, donor governments deny the right of choice to those people in countries who receive it at no immediate economic cost. I examine two ideas central to this controversy: one, that the privilege of food choice is present only in prosperous, industrialized countries; and two, that food is conceptualized symbolically, culturally, and ethically in a variety of ways. In sub-Saharan Africa this is no less the case than in Western countries, yet when Africans attempt to exercise choice concerning GM foods they are told: “Beggars can’t be choosers.”1 Such sentiments suggest that Africans are denied the right of free food choice because Western nations, many of which are also aid donors, have already tacitly determined the relationship of food pathways to and for Africa.

The news reports and opinion pieces published in response to President Mwanawasa’s decision have been less refutations of his argument against GM foods than comments on his perceived arrogance and ignorance at denying food to “his own starving people.” While this Western response to African hunger has been seen before, Mwanawasa’s initial declaration, and perhaps even more his stubborn adherence to an anti-GM stance, is rather less orthodox. In order to better analyze Mwanawasa’s political position this article will do what many others have not: it will reserve judgment long enough to examine the social, political, and gastronomic environment in Zambia that helped to generate the president’s antagonistic posture, articulated in one editorial as the choice between “GM or death.”2

“Africa Becomes Battleground for Genetically Altered Food”3

No controversy—nuclear power, global warming, or even the eerie possibility of cloning human beings—occupies a larger space in that disturbing arena where science, social values, and commerce collide [than GM foods].4

The controversy over genetically modified foods is one of those rare topics that draw together cultural, economic, and religious values. Although typically presented as a scientific issue, GM foods also tend to inspire emotional reactions that speak to global issues of economic and cultural power. Before July 2002, GM foods debate in the West focused on juxtapositions that pit international producers against local consumers5 and occasionally agribusiness against individual farmers,6 but rarely did they concern themselves with ameliorating hunger. These parameters were tested when international media began running a seemingly paradoxical story: “We Would Rather Starve Than Get Genetically Modified Foods, Says President,”7 which reported that Mwanawasa was considering refusing any food aid that included genetically modified elements. Articles written in response to the Zambian president’s political stance articulated a range of opinions, from aloof dismissal of what was regarded as “yet another case” of an African leader posturing with dictatorial bravado, to expressions of disbelief and anger. Advocates, and even some opponents to GM foods being allowed into European markets, voiced their discontent at a president who would refuse food aid to his own starving people, regardless of its value or content.8

Woman with baby selling non-GM tomatoes, Mansa market, Luapula Province, October 1999. Photograph by Christopher M. Annear ©2004

I suspect that the reason for ignoring the issue of food quantity in a debate that until Mwanawasa’s statement had been primarily about food quality is that it reshuffled the political arguments. One of the main sticking points with GM foods has been the long-term health effects of bioengineering on consumers and the land on which it is grown. However, the capacity of such seeds to enduringly fulfill promises of improved yields is rarely questioned.

Moreover, agribusiness firms have often promoted genetically modified organisms as the next hunger-quenching “Green Revolution.”9 Based on the generally accepted notion that GM crops would bring enhanced productivity, Africa and GM foods seemed to be an ideal match: the continent “ravaged by hunger” is given high-yielding crops. But a problem arose when Africans themselves began to challenge this relationship.

Defining Food in Contemporary Zambia: Rural Perspectives

In an industrial society getting a meal is an interval or a conclusion to the day’s work; in a society [that is pre-industrial], getting a meal is the day’s work.10

The debate over whether to accept or refuse GM foods in Zambia is inextricably connected to the symbolism of food. The late New Zealand anthropologist Raymond Firth’s observation above offers a useful point of departure. Firth is correct—food production and procurement are essentially different activities in industrial and agrarian societies. Therefore, the meanings associated with food are likely to be dissimilar, as well, and certainly Zambia is no exception. However, modern Zambia, along with most other countries of the world, must account for both urban and rural modes of labor and production, which coexist and interact through both meanings and markets within its national borders.

Zambian President Levy Patrick Mwanawasa during his July 2002 visit to the Lunda-Kazembe Mutomboko Ceremony in Mwansabombwe, Luapula Province, Zambia. Photograph by Ruth Kerkham ©2004

At least 60 percent of Zambians live in nonurban areas.11 While many rural people rely on urban wage-remittances, severance payments, and other forms of imported income, the vast majority of Zambians subsist on locally cultivated staples such as maize, cassava, and finger millet. Rural residents typically produce the daily meals they consume through carefully planned year-round agricultural labor, and thus are intimately involved in the precarious process of food cultivation and harvest. Not surprisingly, therefore, among the attributes of highly valued foods is the ability to generate consistent and reliable results. Foods laden with the richest symbolic meanings are most likely to be “traditional”12 ones that are known and trusted locally.

Defining food in rural, agrarian areas at first appears deceptively simple: food is what fills a person’s stomach, food is what fuels strength for work. Symbolic subtleties, however, emerge upon consideration of which foods fulfill these requirements. Moreover, it is not just the type of food, but also the processes by which it is prepared, for whom, and at which times, that shape value. In the Luapula region, and throughout northern Zambia, the most significant food is nshima,13 a thick porridge made from maize, cassava, and sometimes finger millet, that is eaten at almost every meal. Consuming several hearty portions of nshima means that a person will be “satisfied,” which in turn results in strength for work. The concept of being satisfied (ukwikuta in Chibemba, the most widely spoken language of northern Zambia) implies more than merely replacing emptiness with food. To eat an adequate amount of locally relevant food “delivers one from hunger” or “chases the hunger” (ukutûka nsala). Nshima is considered so significant to the Zambian diet that a common complaint following the consumption of several ears of roasted maize or a hearty plate of peeled and boiled sweet potatoes sans the basic staple dish is, “Alas, we are dying of hunger. We have not had a bite to eat all day.”14

Nshima in Zambia is often discussed in terms of the energy and gastronomic satisfaction that it confers upon individuals, yet it provides something more significant still: a sense of social coherence. Eating is a social activity, with nshima the anchor of every meal. Raymond Firth underscores this notion of food as socially cohesive. He discusses food production and meanings among Tikopian islanders of the South Pacific as a collaboration between the pragmatic and symbolic:

The relationship of people to food in Tikopia is strongly pragmatic, empirical. They want to eat it, they are anxious about the supply of it, they organize a great deal of their activity around getting it and making it ready for eating. They also are very interested in the idea of food, intellectually and emotionally. They talk a lot about food; they enjoy their own foods cooked in their own way; they are very hospitable in pressing food upon visitors; and very pleased when visitors enjoy it too. With all this the Tikopia have quite an elaborate set of symbolic concepts in which food figures—either being symbolized by other things or itself symbolizing activities and relationships … strictly speaking there are no symbolic objects—there are only symbolic relationships.15

Similarly, the symbolic relationships invested in and reflected by important foods are key to understanding the emotional responses of people in places like Zambia to genetically modified foods.

Symbolic Consumption: Relationships, Values, and Choices Encoded in Food

There are objects or substances which are not edible by their physical nature, because they cannot be masticated or cannot be digested or their flavour is antipathetic: earth, wood, grubs, some marine fauna, etc. Then there are others which are inedible because of their social nature. …16

Now, to return to an assertion presented earlier: what makes food bad to eat even when it is gastronomically edible? Among the variables that affect such a morality of consumption are time, place, and social standing. Certain foods may not be appropriate, or might even be considered temporarily unpalatable during episodes of mourning, rites of initiation, or due to one’s age. Groups, rank, and gender are further delineated and variously amalgamated through the idiom of food. It is often through eating that social relationships are realized and symbolically represented.

Matrilineal clan aggregates in northern Zambia are often united under the banner of foods and animals. Ubowa (mushroom), ubwali (nshima), and isabi (fish) are commonly found group titles. While in some circumstances the consumption of the clan emblem is prohibited to members, clan names can also foster cooperation and familiarity among groups. Certain clans maintain special joking relationships that involve mutual obligation and the social leeway to act especially rudely toward each other without incurring the same ire as one would in typical interactions. These relationships are founded on the complementary nature of the clan names. For example, members of the mushroom and rain clans are “joking cousins” because mushrooms cannot grow without rain; likewise, the fish and crocodile clans are paired because crocodiles subsist on fish.17

Food is also used as an idiom to represent and transform interethnic relations in Zambia. Comparable to many other practices throughout the world, people are sometimes grouped by the foods they are purported to eat. An example is found in the Bemba proverb “abalya mbulu, balapalamana,” which translates loosely as “those who eat water monitors (a large species of lizard) gravitate together.” In a similar manner, ethnic Bemba and Ngoni have in part transformed their previously hostile rivalry into a peaceful joking relationship through gastronomic teasing. Members of each group playfully mock the other for their respective “repulsive” culinary habits. Bembas are cajoled by Ngonis for their atrocious willingness to eat monkeys, while Ngonis are mercilessly harassed for their “disgusting” habit of regularly consuming a certain type of rat. This manner of mischievous banter is so pervasive that Bembas and Ngonis are iconographicaly represented in house paintings and public murals as monkeys and rats throughout Zambia. As shown by interethnic and clan joking relationships, “fighting” via ethnic foodways can diffuse tension and invite sociability. As elsewhere, food in Zambia bestows richer sustenance than merely the sum of its constituent nutrients. Nourishment is endowed upon the social consumer through the symbolic relationships that are both represented and conferred via food. Such messages and meanings are, of course, as various as the foods that are eaten. Concepts appear especially diverse when comparing areas where food is bought and where it is harvested. However, I argue that the processes that pervade the social content appropriated through food are very much the same in urban and rural regions. These include communicating through symbolic representation, fighting for political leverage, and demanding the right to accept (and reject) foods.

Ndlovu’s Thinking:18 Urban Values and Involvement

Although rural people are usually more physically vulnerable than urbanites to envisioned calamities set in motion by GM crops, the debate in Zambia has nonetheless been almost exclusively an urban one. With few exceptions, urban values and definitions of food are the ones that drive public discourse.19 This is generally the case wherever GM foods are debated—in North America, the European Union (eu), and Africa. One of the most significant elements of delineation between urban and rural areas is access to mass media. While much has to do with the capability to receive incoming news and ideas, perhaps even more consequential are the outward channels for sending messages. However, there is a difference between sending and communicating. Compared to those in rural areas, city residents have much greater access to information from foreign sources, yet few ideas coming from Africa seem to be heard in international discourse. In Zambia, the GM foods debate has presented a temporary solution, which has served to open communication with the outside.

In this way the GM foods debate presents an opportunity to economically marginal so-called Third World nations—the “privilege” of international voice. Urban Zambian opinions seem to be greatly influenced not only by the content of perspectives expressed in the West, but also by a desire simply to be involved. The GM foods debate appears to be viewed in Zambia as a modern and cosmopolitan issue that connects the country to outside nations socially and, Zambians hope, economically.

Most Zambian news articles and opinion pieces discuss food issues by focusing on Zambia’s relationship with the eu. In contrast to rural areas, food is not considered to be meaningful for its local productive significance in cities such as Lusaka and Kitwe. Instead, it is recognized for its value as a trade commodity that opens social and economic links with western Europe. Furthermore, due to the current anti-GM mood in most eu member countries, fears that gm-contaminated food products could be refused in Europe have increased the stakes for hopeful exporters such as Zambia.20 Interestingly, these anxieties are at present wholly academic, since Zambia does not to any significant extent export edible crops to Europe.

As such, the urban Zambian debate ostensibly concerning GM foods can be viewed as a pseudoscientific discourse about international power and modern Zambia’s role in the world. The newspaper article entitled “Ndlovu’s Thinking” is a good example of such discussion. It is an editorial written as a rebuttal to Zambian member of parliament Alfred Ndlovu, whose original written piece expressed general confidence in the integrity of the United States to provide healthful foods as aid to drought-stricken regions of Zambia.

The editorialist disagrees with Ndlovu, calling him naïve for trusting a capitalist country to have moral rather than economic motives propelling decisions concerning GM food products. He expresses pragmatic disillusionment with Zambia’s relationship to Western countries and reminds readers of how international aid donors, especially the United States, have previously sent understudied medical products such as the antidiarrheal Immodium to Africa, only to later ban it after many Africans died. Although cautionary, the writer is not entirely dismissive of Western countries. He wants Zambians to be cognizant of the nature of capitalistic, profit-minded decision making; nonetheless, he counsels his readers not to sever international relations. Ultimately, the editorialist is hopeful that greater international parity can be achieved among countries through careful and constructive engagement.

This rebuttal to Ndlovu expresses sentiments that echo the majority of Zambian commentaries. Common themes declare that GM foods might be poisonous and that crossbreeding between GM and indigenous varieties could permanently contaminate national food supplies,21 resulting in a decrease of endemic biological diversity.22 Despite the scientific rhetoric that consistently peppers these pieces, this mainly urban debate actually concerns power and international relations. Zambians often lament their lack of political power; inclusion in GM debates perhaps allows for a measure of engagement. For many Zambians, simply being recognized by Western countries as a participant in such a debate is a victory unto itself.

“Dignity in Hunger”23

It is all about economics. If you have economic power you can choose what you eat and eat what you want from where ever it is produced. On the other [hand,] you eat what is thrown at you, and [are] forced to give what you want, unless you have dignity. “Uwakwensha ubushiku bamutasha lilya bwacha!” [One who drives at night is only thanked in the morning].24

In Zambia, involvement in the GM foods debate generates international interaction that is otherwise nearly nonexistent. Whereas North American and European news sources tend to dismiss African skepticism of the healthfulness of GM foods as arrogant and irresponsible,25 Zambians assert their opinions with self-confidence and the expectation that they are—or should be—equal partners in the discussion. However, the de facto reality of international news coverage is that political and scientific issues tend to be reported as if they occur exclusively in Western countries. Individual non-Western voices are thus very rarely included in news accounts of debates that do not explicitly refer to their country or region of origin. It appears that international news outlets covering Zambia’s response to being “forcefed” GM foods have been dismissive because of the tacit belief that Zambia is overstepping its role as a donor-dependent nation.

The sentiments in the quote above underscore the opinions of many residents of the cities and towns of Zambia. However, what about the perspectives of the rural Zambians who are reported to be starving? The few articles that depict the plights of Zambian villagers have been published almost exclusively in Western newspapers,26 and tend to express an overwhelming willingness on the part of rural people to eat whatever food is given to them. Moreover, while Western media report starving African masses, Zambian newspapers tend to contradict them, often agreeing with President Mwanawasa’s stance that “There has been a false picture being painted to the outside world that people in Zambia are dying of hunger.”27

Mr. Nason L. Chibwe displaying non-GM cassava root grown on his farm in Kansele on the Luapula Plateau during his independently organized agricultural show and farmer workshop, October 1999. Photograph by Christopher M. Annear © 2004

In reality, the current state of hunger in Zambia is neither wholly desperate nor satisfactory—nor, of course, is it a singular circumstance nationwide. Shortages appear to be most acute in the south and southwest of the country, where diminished rainfall has hampered the cultivation of maize for the past two seasons.28 During those same two growing seasons, in Luapula Province a combination of more acceptable rainfall and the general reliance on the two-to-three-year-maturing, hardy cassava plant has produced a relative bumper crop. Nevertheless, anecdotal evidence suggests that localized food shortages are still occurring in some areas, due less to poor harvests than to overselling by individuals attracted to exceptionally high prices for staple foods. Even in areas where food is scarce, poor Zambians may be suffering more from governmental inability (or unwillingness) to distribute Zambian-grown foods than from environmental capriciousness. At the very least, the current problem has certainly been exacerbated by a dysfunctional political system that has failed to distribute available food resources.

Conclusion: Relief-induced Agonism—Starving for International Attention

This article has considered the Zambian role in international debate over genetically modified foods. President Mwanawasa’s initial skepticism and later ban on GM foods from entering the country (including in the form of aid) have elicited a wide range of international and national responses. Despite spirited debate on many sides of this provocative issue, none of the news or editorial pieces I have come across presents compelling analysis that helps to explain why Zambians, and above all their president, have expressed the opinions discussed throughout this article. In an effort to replace rhetoric with comprehension, I suggest that Zambian urban and rural perspectives on GM foods, as well as Western media reaction to the Zambian government’s controversial stance, can be viewed as an extension of Robert Dirks’s notion of “relief-induced agonism.”29

Dirks describes relief-induced agonism as a condition of predictable and patterned aggression that follows after acutely underfed populations first receive enough nourishment to regain some strength. Perhaps counterintuitively, the reciprocal act of aid recipients is not merely to be unappreciative of the efforts by relief workers, but to act out aggressively, at times even physically abusing the people who fed them. The very people, therefore, who assisted the early recuperation of starving populations become the targets of their aggression.

Some populations in Zambia may currently be in such dire physical condition; however, what has so amazed Western donor nations is the unexpected analytical belligerency exhibited by Zambia’s government and citizenry. Zambian urbanites are angry at perceived international inequality and the apparent Western unwillingness to treat African countries as anything more than “dumping grounds” for their unwanted and/or unused resources. The writer of “Ndlovu’s Thinking” articulates his anger as follows:

What I am saying is that neither the world, the un nor anyone will protect your citizens. It is for the government to ensure [that] its people and nation … [are] protected. This is fraught with hardships and danger when you are a small nation without economic muscle and without a strong infrastructure, because you will always be held to ransom on aid, loans and others unless you accede to certain programmes etc. … Africa in the world pecking order comes bottom of the pile, fact not sentiment.30

What Zambia may be expressing is a relief-induced agonism of the analytical rather than physiological sort—a reaction to perceived political starvation. I am not suggesting that Zambian rejection of genetically modified food aid is necessarily an automatic reflex reaction of a starving people, but instead a calculated response by a geopolitically hungry people. Debate of GM foods has been recognized in Zambia as a conduit for varied urban and rural responses that reach outside the African region. There are, of course, sincere anxieties in Zambia about the future health effects of genetically modified foods. However, what has been considered here is how the GM foods debate has become a forum for expressing urban frustration over both the lack and the tenor of social, political, and economic engagement with the world outside of Africa.

Conversely, the presence of such rapacious urban voices serves to magnify the rarity of national media engagement with rural areas, even though these are where most hypothetical GM contamination would occur. If Zambia and other politically and economically marginal countries are to succeed at building the internal strength and stature that they so desire, then all people must be given voices both inside and outside of national borders. Foods, Firth reminds us, mark symbolic relationships. Meanings are therefore neither fixed nor unidirectional. Just as urbanites seek to be recognized as participants in worldwide discussions concerning GM foods, rural perspectives must also be heard in order to reach meaningful accord.

The Zambian rejection of genetically modified foods is significant and noteworthy, even if heavily skewed toward urban channels of communication. For the attentive observer, it is more than just President Mwanawasa’s defiant anti-GM declaration that can be heard emanating from Zambia. His act was one of calculated political opportunism; however, by making his pronouncement he inadvertently initiated a debate over economic power and choice that included a country which was hitherto a silent recipient of aid. While international response to his position has been largely critical, it has also focused a temporary spotlight on a hungry country, a small but considerable consolation for the many Zambians who see few other options than to express their relief-induced agonism. As a nation that is generally politically stable but slowly deflating economically, Zambia, like many other countries in similar straits, might be too weak to rise up, yet it is still strong enough to take a nip at the hand that feeds it.

notes

The author acknowledges Parker Shipton, Diana Wylie, James A. Pritchett, James C. McCann, and Ruth H. Kerkham as well as two anonymous reviewers for insightful editorial comments. Additionally, appreciation is extended to Dr. Kenneth D. Kaunda, the first president of Zambia, and his assistants, Mr. Godwin Mfula and Mr. Gabriel Banda, for offering illuminating perspectives during his yearlong residency with the Boston University Balfour African President in Residence program, 2002–2003. This article is dedicated with great fondness and respect to the late Mr. Nason L. Chibwe, bashikulwifwe.

1. Zambia has been told by the United States either to use fifty million dollars to buy America’s GM maize through the World Food Programme, or face starvation. When the United States had earlier tried to force GM food aid on India, an unnamed usaid spokesman told the media: “Beggars can’t be choosers.” See Robert Vint, “Force-feeding the World: America’s ‘GM or Death’ Ultimatum to African Reveals the Depravity of Its GM Marketing Policy,” AgBioIndia Mailing List, http://www.connectotel.com/gmfood/ag020902.txt, 2002.

2. Ibid.

3. Emily Gersema, “Africa Becomes Battleground for Genetically Altered Food,” Associated Press, 9 September 2002.

4. Michael Spector, “The Pharmageddon Riddle: Did Monsanto Just Want More Profits, or Did It Want to Save the World?” New Yorker, 10 April 2000.

5. See, for example, Mark L. Winston, Travels in the Genetically Modified Zone (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2002); Kathleen Hart, Eating in the Dark: America’s Experiment with Genetically Engineered Food (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002); and Bill Lambrecht, Dinner at the New Gene Café: How Genetic Engineering Is Changing What We Eat, How We Live, and the Global Politics of Food (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2001).

6. Winston, Travels in the Genetically Modified Zone.

7. This headline is an excerpt from comments made by the president to the British news outlet Sky News. Sky News must have considered this story very important because Mwansabombwe, where the ceremony is held, is quite remote, one thousand kilometers from the national capital, Lusaka. “We Would Rather Starve Than Get Genetically Modified Foods, Says President,” Zambian Post, 30 July 2002.

8. See, for example, Elizabeth Neuffer, “Unpalatable to the Starving: Food for Thought,” Boston Globe, 1 September 2002; Henri E. Cauvin, “Between Famine and Politics, Zambians Starve,” New York Times, 30 August 2002.

9. See, for example, “Bring on a Gene Revolution,” Financial Mail (South Africa), 6 September 2002; Isabel Vincent, “Zambia Refuses Food Despite un Assurances: Officials Fear Genetically Modified Grain Will Destroy Their Crops,” National Post (Canada), 27 August 2002.

10. Raymond Firth, Symbols: Public and Private (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), 244 (italics in original).

11. Central Statistics Office of the Republic of Zambia, Preliminary 1990–2000 Census Data (Lusaka: Central Statistics Office, 2002). The precise figure for rural populations is 61 percent, up from 60 percent in 1990.

12. I put the qualifier “traditional” in quotes to highlight the relatively rapid integration of nonendemic crops such as cassava and maize into the small group of trusted and reliable staples in Zambia. Cassava likely reached the northern region of Zambia in the early eighteenth century via Portuguese and African traders and slavers. Although maize originally reached Zambia by similar means, what is now widely grown is a hybrid form of the crop called sr-52, one of the first agricultural hybrids developed in southern Africa. Linda C. Jackson and Robert T. Jackson, “The Role of Cassava in African Famine Prevention,” in Rebecca Huss-Ashmore and Solomon H. Katz, African Food Systems in Crisis: Part Two: Contending with Change (New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1990), 207–225. Johan Pottier, Migrants No More: Settlement and Survival in Mambwe Villages, Zambia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 20–21.

13. The term nshima is used generically throughout Zambia to refer to this staple food. Ubwali is the specific term used in Luapula and much of northern Zambia, where the language Chibemba is primarily spoken.

14. Audrey I. Richards, Land, Labour and Diet in Northern Rhodesia: An Economic Study of the Bemba Tribe (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), 47. Despite the date of Richards’s work, this sensibility continues to be voiced in Zambia today.

15. Firth, Symbols, 245.

16. Firth, Symbols, 248.

17. Audrey I. Richards, “Reciprocal Clan Relationships among the Bemba of N. E. Rhodesia,” Man 37 (1937): 188–193.

18. “Comment: Ndlovu’s Thinking,” Zambian Post, 9 September 2002.

19. Winston, Travels in the Genetically Modified Zone.

20. See, for example, “Better Dead Than gm-fed? Europe’s Green Are Helping to Keep Africans Hungry,” Economist, 21 September 2002; Rachel Wynberg, “High Risks and Dubious Benefits: The Case Against the Introduction of gmos,” African Wildlife 5 (2001): 9–11.

21. “Comment: Ndlovu’s Thinking,” Zambian Post.

22. Wynberg, “High Risks and Dubious Benefits.”

23. “Comment: Dignity in Hunger,” Zambian Post.

24. Ibid.

25. “Feeding Hungry Gets More Challenging,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1 October 2002; Cauvin, “Between Famine and Politics, Zambians Starve.”

26. Devon Walsh, “Earth Summit,” Independent, 30 August 2002; Davan Maharaj and Anthony Mukwita, “Zambia Rejects Gene-altered u.s. Corn,” Los Angeles Times, 28 August 2002.

27. “Aid Workers Deny Food Crisis Exaggerated,” United Nations Integrated Regional Information Networks (irin), 20 September 2002.

28. But apparently not the 2003 growing season. This most recent harvest has been a dramatic improvement over the 2001 and 2002 seasons, respectively. See “Kaoma District Expects 21,000 Tonnes of Maize,” Times of Zambia, 1 August 2003.

29. Robert Dirks, “Famine, Hunger Seasons and Relief-Induced Agonism,” in Rebecca Huss-Ashmore and Solomon H. Katz, African Food Systems in Crisis: Part One: Microperspectives (New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1989), 295–302.

30. “Comment: Ndlovu’s Thinking,” Zambian Post.

Praveen Anand is chef at Dakshin, named by the Miele Guide as one of the top twenty restaurants in Asia. His embrace of traditional South Indian food is significant in a nation that has begun discarding some of its food customs in a headlong rush into modernity.

Vijaysree Venkatraman: Tell us about the idea behind Dakshin.

Praveen Anand: The word dakshin is Sanskrit for “south.” Our goal is to present authentic culinary creations from India’s four southern states: Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka. The larger goal is to revive the disappearing culinary heritage of these regions.

VV: How did you get interested in food?

PA: My father worked with the Indian Railways and was constantly getting transferred, so I grew up in my grandparents’ home in Hyderabad. My grandfather was a policeman and a yoga expert, the author of books on this ancient practice. Thanks to him, I got into sports and physical activities. He also inculcated in me the habit of reading. K.M. Munshi’s seven-volume mythological series, Krishnavatara, on the life of Lord Krishna—that’s where I started.

My grandmother, who is ninety now, cooked for us all. I would accompany her to the market and carry all the heavy bags. I also tended our backyard vegetable garden. Because my uncles hadn’t married yet, there were no women in the family to help her in the kitchen. So I volunteered to be her assistant. She only gave me simple tasks like peeling garlic or shelling nuts. But being her helper meant I would get a little more than my share of the good food she made—that was my motivation, nothing nobler!

To me, she was like a magician—whatever she touched was perfect. Her cooking was in the traditional Andhra style: hot, with lots of red chilies. We had a separate pantry to store the dazzling variety of mango- and lime-based pickles she made. Food was vegetarian except on weekends, when we would gorge on chicken, mutton, or seafood. Her simple chutneys, dals and rasams, fish curry and mutton khorma—all were wonderful.

I became the family’s official taster. If I declared (even jokingly) that a dish was not up to the mark, no one would touch it. I wielded a lot of power!

VV: And you went to catering school as a young man?

PA: When it was time for college, I gained admission into two programs: aeronautical engineering and hotel management. There was no pressure on me to start earning but I wanted to be independent as soon as possible. Going to catering school meant I would be a professional in three years instead of five. So I came to the Institute of Hotel Management, Catering Technology and Applied Nutrition here in Chennai.

VV: When did you turn into an upholder of South Indian culinary traditions?

PA: In culinary school I specialized in Western cooking—I really did not see any value in anything Indian back then. But five years into my job as a chef, management floated the idea of Dakshin. My boss thought I would be a valuable addition to the team. I resisted the transfer as long as I could. My forte was continental food, not Indian!

After I reluctantly joined, focus groups began coming into the restaurant. One group would love what we offered; another would trash much the same meal. What does one make of such conflicting feedback? I remember one prominent visitor saying, “This is going to be such a glorious failure.” Somehow that remark spurred me on. It got me thinking and cleared my confusion.

At Dakshin we re-create authentic recipes. It dawned on me that we had to stick to traditions, analyze dishes, and present them well. For this we would have to study our local diners and the communities they belong to. Even subgroups within the strictly vegetarian Brahmin caste, the Iyers and Iyengars, have subtle differences in their cuisines. Their palates will tend to resist deviations from the script. So when considering dishes common to many—like the broths known as rasam—this would be an issue.

You would be astounded by the culinary diversity we have in this country. Spices are plentiful. The curry that is tweaked out of a given set of ingredients depends completely on a cook’s ingenuity. But each community specializes in specific combinations of masalas—spice blends—which they have perfected over centuries. We had to appreciate this fact and work hard to understand culinary traditions better. Doing so put me on a path of learning that will last a lifetime.

Praveen Anand in the garden of the Hotel Park Sheraton, Chennai. Photograph by Vijayan.P. © 2010

VV: What are some of the dishes always on the menu?

PA: Rice is the staple in almost all southern cuisines, so you will see plain and flavored rice of various kinds to eat with stews and curries. There is bisibela hulianna, a standalone rice and lentil dish cooked with spices. There is idiappam—steamed rice vermicelli; the lacy pancake known as appam; and crepe-like dosa made from fermented rice batter.

We use different types of aromatic spices, regional chilies, and black pepper. The masala-coated deep-fried small prawns, for instance, are red in color from the ground bedgi chili, which is mild in heat. People finish with bhagala bhath, rice mashed with yogurt. Fresh greens, tempered with black mustard and curry leaf, are always on the menu. Curry leaf is a vital ingredient in South Indian cooking.

VV: You have now become an anthropologist of sorts?

PA: Yes, you could say that. My first job was to get the restaurant off the ground, then I had to grow our repertoire of dishes. Initially, getting out into the field for research was difficult, so from the list of hotel trainees I would zero in on people from particular regions. Once I picked Muslims from Tamil Nadu and asked them about dishes unique to their community. They brought me tiffin carriers full of good stuff: rice dumplings with mutton, paya (goat’s trotters) soup. I invited their relatives, their aunts and grandmothers, to come give us a demonstration. Convincing women from conservative families to come to a five-star hotel was not easy, but some women accepted the invitation. They may have been intimidated by the presence of trained chefs like me, but they loved to teach youngsters. I learned to observe from a distance, to take myself out of the picture.

I also went to research libraries. I pored over the multi-volume Castes and Tribes of Southern India by Edgar Thurston, a British ethnographer from colonial times. I attended weddings and welcomed tip-offs about regional foods. I had some unusual sources: for instance, a cycling community. They would report back on unpretentious roadside eateries where food is still made the old-fashioned way on coal stoves or wood fires, with few ingredients. All this networking and reaching out helped me.

VV: Tell us more about Dakshin’s food festivals—foodies in the city mark them on their calendars, I am told.

PA: The idea behind the festivals is to showcase South Indian food, especially those cuisines with an interesting history. We host two different food festivals a year, each lasting ten days. We re-create lost traditions; we do not innovate. We also celebrate actual Indian festivals like Deepavali and Pongal, when we serve special feast-day thalis.

For the first food festival, Ummi Abdulla, the author of Malabar Muslim Cooking, walked us through her recipes. We presented “Moplah Magic”—the cuisine of Kerala Muslims who trace their ancestry to Arab traders. That was a simple cut-and-paste job. Later my quest for festival themes took me to a wedding in Chettinad, in Tamil Nadu, a region that is home to the NattuKottai Chettiars, an ancient mercantile community. Knowing my interest in local food and history, a friend introduced me to an old English-speaking widow who lived in a humble setting. She told me about the food in the region. As we spoke, she grew excited and pulled out a nearly foot-long key, saying, “Come, I will show you my house.”

I followed her through a dense growth of dry lantana bushes, wondering where on earth she was taking me. We emerged from the wilderness into an abandoned mansion. The hall had golden ceilings, Belgian glass chandeliers, and Spanish tiles. In the storeroom were old-style cooking vessels. You could cook for two thousand people and still have dishes left over, so many feasts were hosted there. Unable to maintain this palatial home, the widow had moved into the servant quarters; her only son had left for Malaysia years ago.

Her personal story reflects the history of this arid region. NattuKottai Chettiars had long traded with Southeast Asia and Ceylon, but in the nineteenth century many left to seek their fortunes in Burma, Singapore, and Malaysia. That explains the star anise and fennel seed in their food.

The richness of their cuisine was in evidence at the wedding the next day. There I met the caterer, America Natesan, who had done a stint as a cook in the U.S. He was a valuable resource behind our successful festival “Chettiar Kitchen: The Cuisine of the NattuKottai Chettiars.” And the widow’s son returned from Malaysia a few months after my visit, I am happy to tell you!

VV: Your recent festival was based on the forgotten recipes of Pondicherry (now Puducherry), a former French colony.

PA: I had always asked about local specialties there but never got any good leads. Then I visited on holiday. At a coffee shop I had a salad, langoustine curry, and a chicken dish—the owner just called it “Creole” food. I went straight to the local library to learn more, but my search was fruitless. Then someone brought me a tattered, out-of-print local cookbook. Glancing through it, I realized the ingredients were Indian. Not one was French, and yet the food tasted so distinctive. There was a seafood curry with fish and prawn—such mixing doesn’t normally happen in India. There was a prawn curry with ice apple, a small tropical fruit that absorbs spices beautifully. Baguettes, made with rice flour, were excellent for soaking up flavorful sauces. Coconut was used in a lot of the dishes—there was even a coconut-based substitute for mayonnaise.

I pursued this lead relentlessly. My guess is this was not everyday food: local cooks served it to their French masters or prepared it for a special guest, like a son-in-law. That made the food just right for our diners.

VV: You had a vegetarian festival based entirely on a nineteenth-century cookbook. How did that come about?

PA: In his column for The Hindu, Chennai city historian Mr. S. Muthiah mentioned that a reader had sent him a copy of Paka-Shastra, a 365-page cookbook published in Madras in January 1891—possibly the first modern Tamil cookbook. Women’s education was just then catching on, and one man, T.K. Ramachandra Rau, was concerned that daughters would no longer have sufficient culinary training to be good home cooks. So he set about documenting traditional recipes, including some desserts like gooseberry payasam and onion payasam that are unheard of today.

That foresighted man left behind such a resource! The book documents Brahmin cooking. What is striking is the simple, austere style of cooking—very few dishes have even onions and garlic. The recipes call for few spices, leaving the taste of the vegetable and of the few spices clearly discernible. This contrasts with the present-day practice of overwhelming a vegetable with many spices, which also tend to crowd each other out.

VV: Rumor has it that you are working to translate an even older cookbook written in Sanskrit.

PA: Yes, this is a book of recipes called the Paka-Darpanam. It also lays out the characteristics for a royal chef, good combinations of dishes for a balanced meal, and bad combinations that are to be avoided. It must be one of the oldest cookbooks in the world. Its anonymous author reminds me of the mythological Hindu king Nala, a connoisseur of good food who was also an excellent cook.

VV: What is the future of traditional cooking in India?

PA: It may die out with the grannies of today unless we professional chefs step in and document their culinary knowledge. Over the years I have learned so much from them, and there is much left to learn.

Youngsters are typically rebels—I was like that, too. Everything Western looked great to me when I was young. The French, they say, are enamored of anything that is French. In India, we don’t appreciate our heritage as we should—maybe because we are unaware of its richness and variety. It is my mission to share what I’ve learned over the years.

There has been a tremendous response to our food festivals. Everybody loves the food, but many are eager to learn even more. That fills me with hope. The highest appreciation is when some person says, “This is like the food my grandmother or aunt used to make in the village—I had almost forgotten this dish.” Such simple acknowledgment of my work fills me with joy.

Twelve years ago, nearly to the day, I sat down to write my first editor’s letter for Gastronomica. I was bursting with plenty to say, though I didn’t quite know how to begin. I feel the same way today. Twelve years ago Gastronomica was an upstart idea that had come to me as I struggled with the unnatural divide between my lives as a college professor and as a food writer. I had never done any editing before and, truth be told, had no idea what I was getting into. I simply believed that we needed a journal to bring together the disparate worlds of academia and popular writing about food, to help overcome their historic rift. I envisioned a publication that would dig beneath food’s tasty surface to uncover its deeper, and frequently darker, meanings. A publication that would be visually lush, in order to celebrate the pleasures of kitchen and table but also to provoke readers through sometimes disturbing imagery. I wanted an adventurous journal to explore some of the remote, undiscovered places on the food map of the world, as well as undiscovered places within ourselves.

I hardly considered whether such an edgy publication could succeed. But succeed it has. Thanks to the marvelous writers and artists who have contributed over the years, and to the support of friends at University of California Press, Gastronomica has not only thrived but won a potful of awards. Along the way, it has given many young people their first publication even as it has offered established writers an opportunity to play with a new, food-centric voice. Working with them all has been a joy. But when UC Press decided to sharply cut production costs, I realized that I don’t want to preside over a different, more purely academic journal. So, after much reflection, I’ve chosen to step down as editor of Gastronomica. The issue you now hold in your hands is my last.

Gastronomica was founded in the belief that the more we know about food, the greater our pleasure in it, and the more profound our awareness of the world. I like to think that Gastronomica has helped nurture this awareness. Since the journal first appeared, there has been a sea change in our thinking about food. Although in my first editor’s letter I boldly proclaimed that “Food Studies Comes of Age,” in retrospect I see that food studies was then still in its infancy. Now it has grown. The issues surrounding food, whether they divide or help us cohere, have never been more prominent. Food studies courses and programs have proliferated, and it is now nearly impossible to keep up with all the gastronomical books being published in political science, physics, and art history, to name just a few of the fields that have increasingly turned their gaze to the study of food. Most exciting of all is the appearance of a new generation of students eager for involvement with food. Despite the prospect of a precarious livelihood, these young people are choosing careers in the kitchen or on the farm. Youth always makes the future look bright.

Because of young people, I worry less today about globalization and broken food systems than I did at Gastronomica‘s inception over a decade ago. I have seen how individual and communal efforts can resist the homogenization of food cultures and the hegemony of fast food, how they can counteract cynical political expediencies to create vibrant communities of people committed to the pursuit of healthy and delicious food. No matter where I’ve traveled over this past decade, from Iceland to India, Oman to Vietnam, I’ve discovered a palpable pride in local culinary traditions, a bulwark against the relentless march of McDonald’s across the globe.

For this, my last issue, I’m thrilled to feature Richard Paul’s striking artwork as the cover illustration, since it captures Gastronomica’s dark humor. His candy-covered skull also serves as a kind of culinary memento mori for the journal as it has been. I close my final letter with special thanks to my staff, who are also leaving the journal: Frances Baca, Gastronomica‘s awesome design director, who has made these pages so vibrant over the years; and Jane Canova, my highly skilled managing editor, who has always kept the business end of things smooth as butter. Above all, I’m grateful to you, devoted readers, for sharing my vision, and for accompanying me these many years. It’s been a lovely ride.

borborygmus
Rumblings from the World of Food

orts and scantlings
Flesh and Blood | Mark Morton

feast for the eye
A 1939 World’s Fair Souvenir Plate | Shax Riegler

poem
Calon Ségur 1945 | Michael Joyce

family history
Kieflies | Alison Kinney

gallery
Brighton Beach | Michael Friedman and Alexander Tochilovsky

history’s table
Marisa Mori’s Edible Futurist Breasts | Jennifer Griffiths

taste
Journey by Bottle: Uncovering the Allure of Guyanese Cassareep | Darrin DuFord

local fare
Simit: Turkey’s National Bread | Alisa Roth

investigations
Slush on the Mizzentops, Butter in the Hold: Food on American Clipper Ships | Andrew Beahrs
Solider of the Fork: How Nathaniel Newnham-Davis Democratized Dining | Andrea Broomfield

culture
A Kodava Wedding | Rohan Kamicheril

poem
Reason Number Four | Margaret Lincoln

religion
A Rat on the Plate: The Last Supper Window in Saint Mary’s Church, Warwick | Olivier Bauer

cuisine
Sudado de Raya: An Ancient Peruvian Dish | Robert Bradley

the natural world
The Tradescants’ Culinary Treasures | Amy L. Tigner

literary lives
James Bond and the Art of Eating Eggs | Elizabeth Hale

personal history
On the Zampone Trail | John F. Carafoli

temporality
Melancholy and Mourning: Black Banquets and Funerary Feasts | Jane Levi

photographs
Bibimbap | Toby Binder

ecology
A Born-Again Hog Farmer | Barry Estabrook

chef’s page
An Interview with Praveen Anand, Dakshin, Chennai, India | Vijaysree Venkatraman

review essay
Food, Service, and Play in Restaurant Culture | Jennifer Burns Levin

the bookshelf
Books in Review

lagniappe
Deep-Fried Gadgets | Henry Hargreaves

Cover: Richard Paul, 100s&1000s, © 2009. Courtesy of Theodore:Art, New York.

Key West, Florida, has had a number of identities over the last two centuries. It has been a shipwreck-salvaging town, a cigar-manufacturing town, and a military town. Now it’s a tourist town, catering to visitors who pay top dollar for hotels, fishing charters, and meals, and to vacationers who pour off the cruise ships that dock nearly every day. Most of Key West’s restaurants are found along Duval Street, the main tourist drag. Twenty years ago, a restaurant called Ricky’s Blue Heaven opened several blocks from Duval, on Petronia Street in Bahama Village, the island’s historically black neighborhood. Serving mostly Caribbean dishes, Blue Heaven quickly received a rave review in the New York Times and has been unstintingly popular with tourists and locals ever since. More recently, other quality restaurants have opened nearby. Two years ago, Colombian Grace, the island’s first restaurant to feature food from Colombia, joined Blue Heaven on Petronia Street. The proprietor is Zulma Segura.

Nancy Klingener: How did you arrive in Key West?

Zulma Segura: My sister lived here, and she came to visit me in Bogot.. She said, why don’t you come? You’ll like it; it has bicycles; it’s small. She likes big cities, I like small places. Here in Key West, you can be anywhere in just five minutes. I love the size of the island. I love that it’s multicultural. You can meet people from everywhere. And there are bicycles, bicycles, bicycles! When I first arrived, I worked as a waitress at Blue Heaven. I had no experience. I didn’t speak English. But I worked there and I learned English. I saved pretty much everything I made.

NK: How did Colombian Grace come about?

ZS: It was a crazy decision, an impulse. After five years at Blue Heaven, I was like, oh my God, what am I doing now? I have a degree in marketing and public relations, but I didn’t want to go back to that field. At Blue Heaven I discovered I was good with people. I like taking care of customers and spending time with them. When you add food service, I just love the combination. But this restaurant is the hardest thing I have done in my whole life. When I decided to open the restaurant, my mom came here to train the cook. After the first year, the cook left, so I had to start cooking myself. The recipes are my mom’s and my grandma’s.

Zulma Segura at her family’s coffee plantation in Colombia. She selects the beans and roasts them to serve at her Key West restaurant, Colombian Grace. Courtesy of Zulma Segura

NK: So you had worked as a waitress but not as a chef?

ZS: I grew up with Colombian food, so I knew the flavors, even though I didn’t know how to cook. At first things didn’t taste right, so I was cooking with my mom on the phone. She’s like, what are you using? How are you doing it? I learned to cook over the phone. Even though I know how to cook now, it’s still hard. Every day something goes wrong with the refrigerator, with the plumbing, with the electric. It’s hard to get fresh vegetables, to find good-quality beef at not-outrageous prices. The hardest thing is getting people to try a restaurant with this name. When I first opened, nobody here had tried Colombian food. Even worse, Colombia has a stereotype in the States: drugs, cartels, guerillas. But there are a lot of great things about my country, like our food, our coffee, our bananas, our flowers. The Colombian people, too. That’s what I’m trying to share, so Americans can get another image of us. Our menu helps. Basically, the restaurant’s success comes down to the freshness of our food. We make everything to order. The hot chocolate is made with Colombian cocoa; the coffee is from my family’s plantation. Our juices are made with fresh fruits, and we make our own breads. We use a lot of local seafood. The restaurant’s décor—the molas, the flowers crafted of natural fibers and seeds and pine bark—is handmade by native Indians in Colombia.

NK: What is it like running a restaurant in a tourist town?

ZS: With customers in a big city you can build clientele. In Key West, there are new people every week. We depend on locals and hotels to recommend us—otherwise it’s really hard to reach new customers. That’s the biggest challenge. There are always new people looking for new things. I’m competing with Blue Heaven, with Santiago’s, with La Crêperie, restaurants that have been here for twenty years. Our location helps because we’re right next to them. But it’s hard to convince people that something from Colombia can be good. Sometimes I go to the corner to send people over to the restaurant, and they ask me what it’s called. When I say “Colombian Grace,” they say, “Oh, Colombian—no thanks.” If I’d chosen another name without the “Colombian,” the restaurant would probably attract more people.

NK: How did you come up with the name?

ZS: I wanted to share a Colombian experience—not just the food, but also the decorations, the hospitality. I thought about using the word grace as a charm. That’s why I called it Colombian Grace. Now people think Grace is my nickname. But the idea was to have a name that captured the beauty of the Colombian experience.

NK: How would you describe your menu?

ZS: Colombia has a lot of regions, and each region has a different cooking style. I’m from Bogot., so I serve city food. These are my mom’s recipes. A lot of people from other regions come here and they ask, where are the soups? Where are all the dishes like stews? My food is a little more gourmet than is typical. Colombians use a lot of garlic—we even make our rice with garlic. We use a lot of fresh herbs, scallions, tomatoes, and fresh peppers. One typical dish is called bandeja paisa. It a sampler of ten different foods—red beans, rice, skirt steak, chorizo, pork belly, green plantains, ripe sweet plantains, eggs, avocado, and a corncake. We make a great stew with fresh tomatoes, basil, calamari, and shrimp. All our breads are homemade. Our corncakes are made from white corn and water, our guava bread with yucca flour. We also serve cheese fingers. Our Colombian scrambled eggs have fresh roasted corn or scallions and tomatoes. They’re delicious! One thing we’re known for is our homemade sangria. We make it with pinot noir, passion fruit, peach, pineapple, lime, lemon, and mango. Every day we press fresh mango juice, pineapple juice, orange juice, and lulo, a tropical citrus fruit from Colombia. It’s really good. Our lemonade is also fresh squeezed. Our salad dressing has no oil, it’s just mango—Colombian mango—with a little hot sauce, honey, and white vinegar. We try to make flavorful, healthy food. It’s like going to grandma’s house. She makes everything right there. It takes a little longer than normal, but in the end it’s worth it.

NK: Key West is at the end of the road. There are no farmer’s markets or other reliable places for fresh produce. How do you handle that?

ZS: I go to the local natural-foods store and the grocery store every day to pick out the ingredients myself. We buy seafood locally, but our special potatoes, our chorizo, our empanadas are shipped from Colombia because they’re not available here, not even in Miami.

NK: I understand the coffee is from your family’s property in Colombia?

ZS: We have a coffee plantation an hour and a half from Bogot.. It’s been in my family for three generations. My aunts are taking care of it now. We do all the processing. We pick the beans, dry them, wash them, and roast them, and we offer this coffee here at the restaurant. Last year I closed the restaurant in August and reopened it in October so I could spend two months working on the plantation. I wanted to connect with the coffee that I serve here. I also wanted to bring back more tools, more pots, more cocoa. I want my restaurant to be authentic.

NK: Why did you choose this location and not something on Duval Street, which gets so much more foot traffic?

ZS: Blue Heaven and Santiago’s always have long lines of people waiting to get in. So I was thinking, all these people are looking for food, and there’s no way they can keep standing in line when Blue Heaven or Santiago’s tells them it’s a two-hour wait. I figured they’d go to the next closest place. Petronia Street is now the best food district in Key West. Duval might mean volume, but Petronia is quality. This neighborhood used to have a really bad reputation, like crack town. But now the police are around all the time. The neighbors help, too. There are cameras on every corner. I haven’t had any problems.

NK: Do you have any plans to change or expand in the future?

ZS: In the future I’d like to incorporate more dishes like soups. In Colombia we drink soup in hot weather. We sweat a lot, and we enjoy it. But here it’s really hard to serve soup in the heat. I’m working on getting a Colombian chef to help me in the kitchen. I’d love to do salsa night, to use the second floor for more private parties. Maybe I’ll have longer hours. Right now I’m open five nights for dinner and two days for breakfast. Probably with more help I can open up more. As for the food we serve, I’m happy with it, and my customers’ satisfaction makes everything worthwhile. That is the real motivation for me. It’s an honor to cook for other people. I take care of my customers as if they were in my home. They can have a Colombian experience without getting a passport!

orts and scantlings
Eating by Numbers | Mark Morton

feast for the eye
Il Gusto: José de Ribera’s Personification of Taste | Lisa Vergara

poem
Entomophagy | Rawaan Alkhatib

the hunt
Swimming with Spears | Tetsuhiko Endo

identity
Eating the Hyphen | Lily Wong

investigations
Banking on Beach Plums | Les Garrick
Dishing It Out: Food Blogs and Post-Feminist Domesticity | Paula M. Salvio

local fare
Manioc: A Brazilian Chef Claims Her Roots | Sara B. Franklin

celebrations
Tuesday Night Is Nut Loaf: Women’s Music-Festival Foods | Bonnie J. Morris

americana
Regional Cooking | Constance Hardesty

poem
Sharing mason jars | dee Hobsbawn-Smith

nationalism
Eating Ukraine and Its Lard(er) | Katrina Kollegaeva

prose
Beef Wellington | Nicholas Poluhoff

family history
Tooth for Tooth | Nicole J. Caruth

politics
Fighting Sicilian Corruption, One Vine at a Time | Marie Doezema

photographs
You Are What You Eat | Mark Menjivar

poem
Coney Island, Michigan | Christina Olson

working on the food chain
Kicking the Commodity Habit: On Being Grown Out of Place | Stephen Jones

visionaries
Michel Guérard on French Cuisine | Barbara Santich

culinary history
Mrs. Fisher’s Cigarettes | John Martin Taylor

ecology
Swimming Upstream | Barry Estabrook

trade
Industrialized Delicacies: The Rise of the Umbrian Truffle Business | Rengenier C. Rittersma

food play
Kitchen Hijinks | Alexander Feldman

chef’s page
Colombian Grace, Key West, Florida | Nancy Klingener

review essay
Child of Her Times | Jeannette Ferrary

the bookshelf
Books in Review

lagniappe
Delectable | Edward Bing Lee

Cover: Grant Cornett, Untitled © 2010.

When our daughter was little, she loved hearing legends of the selkie girls, mermaid-like creatures who inhabit the waters off the Irish coast. Sleek as seals in the sea, they shed their skin once captured and turn into humans on land, yet they always long to return to the deep. Leila is grown now, and I haven’t thought about selkies for years, but they came vividly to mind a couple of months ago when I visited the southwest coast of Ireland, where I spent a magical day on the water foraging for seaweed by kayak. Gannets and gulls swooped through the air, on the lookout for fish. As we paddled through a natural arch I caught sight of a grey seal poised on a rock. A selkie! In that misty environment all transformations seemed possible.

Photograph by Jim Kennedy © 2012

Paddling away from the rocks, we encountered a grizzled fisherman in a battered boat who waved in greeting, then pulled up his line and tossed us three glistening mackerel. We headed quickly to a nearby cove for lunch. Early that morning we had stopped at the Skibbereen farmer’s market for bread and cheese—creamy Cashel Blue, sheep’s-milk Crozier blue, and Gouda-style Coolea, my favorite. Sally had packed some chorizo made by Fingal Ferguson of the famous Gubbeen cheesemaking family. We placed chorizo slices on homemade crackers seasoned with dried nori, then filleted a mackerel for a sashimi appetizer. The other mackerel we cleaned and sautéed on a Kelly Kettle in butter flavored with nori and sea-urchin roe. We washed down these offerings from the land and sea with a bracing tonic of elderflower and kelp.

That evening, over dinner at Liss Ard Estate, Sally Barnes, the proprietor of Woodcock Smokery in Castletownshend, regaled me with stories of her pioneering days as one of the first artisanal food producers in West Cork. After dark we ventured through field and forest to James Turrell’s magnificent Irish Sky Garden Crater. A bunker-like concrete tunnel led to steep stairs that opened up to a perfectly oval sky framed by the crater’s perimeter. We lay on our backs on stone plinths set in the crater’s grassy interior and gazed up at the sky. As our eyes adjusted to the darkness, ever more stars appeared, and we saw satellites slowly making their way around the globe.

Of this earthwork James Turrell said that “the most important thing is that inside turns into outside and the other way around.” Isn’t that what terroir is all about, turning the land inside out to enjoy its nourishment, harvesting the fruit of the earth and the kelp that roots below the surface of the sea? Looking up at the sky, I thought of the tastes of Ireland that stayed with me: Knockdrinna’s tangy Kilree Goat’s Cheese; gorgeous fried plaice from Paul Deevy’s kitchen at Richmond House, Cappoquin; the craft black pudding from Nolan’s of Kilcullen; Frank Hederman’s zesty mussels in vinaigrette from his English Market fish stall in Cork; Helvick Gold, a bitter blonde ale from Dungarvan Brewing Company; the plump yeast rolls called “blaas” from Barron’s Bakery in Cappoquin; and Sally Barnes’s exquisite smoked salmon. Everywhere in its sea and its sky, its shifting colors and transfiguring flavors, Ireland’s rich terroir seems to promise a deeper revelation.

The cook plays an important part in the nourishability of food. Meals which are lovingly prepared with a profound desire for the welfare of the eater always benefit the body and mind more than do meals which are commercially prepared, or which have been prepared by someone who is indifferent to or dislikes the proposed eater. No one should cook when in a state of indifference, agitation, sorrow or anger.

From The Hidden Secret of Ayurveda, by Dr. Robert E. Svoboda

The most famous gastronome of them all, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, wrote in Physiologie du Gout, ou Meditations de Gastronomie Transcendante (1826): “Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es.”: “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.” For some, such as Adelle Davis — Time magazine characterized her as “the high priestess of a new nutrition religion” in December 1972 — the consequences of our food choices are stark: “As I see it, every day you do one of two things: build health or produce disease.”

How do we know if we are supposedly building health, rather than unwittingly producing disease by what we consume? We resolve what economists call “informational asymmetry” by relying on food labels, brands and trademarks to confirm the authenticity and quality of our foodstuffs. But making “correct” food choices can be daunting and baffling. In her groundbreaking book, What to Eat, Dr. Marion Nestle estimates that there are around 320,000 food and beverage products available in the United States; and that the average supermarket stocks about 30,000 to 40,000 of them.[1] While we may not understand the true origins or makeup of what we put on our tables, most baby-boomers can tell you in a heartbeat that Rice Krispies go “snap, crackle and pop,” Lucky Charms are “magically delicious,” and Wonder Bread helps “build strong bodies in 8 ways.”

Two of the most symbolic words in food promotion nowadays are “organic” and “natural.” Generally defined, “natural” means “present in or produced by nature” and is not something “altered, treated or disguised,” but rather “faithfully represents nature or life.”[2] “Organic,” in its most abstract sense, means “simple, healthful, and close to nature.”[3] Both words hearken back to a pre-industrial age and share Edenic, utopian connotations. They imply a general distrust of chemical engineering and manufacturing processes. If we are what we eat, are we not closer to “nature” if we incorporate natural and organic foods into our diet? That is the compelling allure and implicit bargain of consuming organic and natural foods.

Depicting the source of food as emanating from a “natural” source and setting is a longstanding tradition among food purveyors. It is intended to alleviate and relieve the anxiety of a successive number of American generations who have lost—as a function of industrial revolutions — any meaningful, day-to-day connection with food production and processing.

The “organic” label is of more recent vintage and is the product of its own countercultural revolution. Its prominence in grocery store aisles reflects a cultural repulsion against factory farms and their reliance on chemical, biological and other industrial solutions to the myriad challenges posed by growing crops and raising animals for safe human consumption. Once avant-garde, the “organic” food movement became mainstream after passage of the federal Organic Food Production Act of 1990.

Feeling ethical and savvy about our food choices does not come cheaply. Organic and sustainable meats, fruits and vegetables tend to cost substantially more than their “conventional” (read here, industrially farmed or produced) counterparts.[4] Whether or not organic food tastes better or is more nutritious for us, consumer studies show that consumer expectations created by a mere logo or words themselves affect subsequent flavor perceptions. In other words, natural or organic food may taste better in part simply because we think that natural or organic food should taste better.[5]

In order to whet and satisfy consumer expectations and desires, tremendous marketing value clearly inheres in the presentation of food as “organic” or “natural.” This article traces the evolution of these two words in their historical context and analyzes how federal and state laws now define and regulate their commercial usage.

Once We Were All Natural and Organic “Locavores”

The ascendency of “organic” and “natural” as preferred food descriptors is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. Before the first industrial revolution, there would be little or no point in labeling food as either organic or natural. These two words only took on meaning when we became largely divorced from the mechanics of food production and in the advent of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, industrial farming and food processing techniques. A tipping point may well have passed in 1920 when urban populations first exceeded rural populations in the United States.

The names “organic” and “natural” are classically paired with bucolic images of rolling green pastures and animals grazing in free-range fashion. The scenes represent a nostalgic vision of the family farm. That hypothetical locale is the reigning mental image of a “natural” food source. Norman Rockwell’s iconic painting, Norman Rockwell Visits the County Agent, depicts the comforting and romantic symbolism of the family farm.[6] It captures the essence of what Americans may prefer to believe is the “natural” provenance of their daily sustenance.

“Norman Rockwell Visits a County Agent,” first published in the 1948 Saturday Evening Post.

Industrial farming realities outstripped family farm nostalgia some time ago. In Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get It Back (2008), Ann Vileisis recounts how the American populace became disconnected from food production and distribution. Vileisis charts the “foodshed” of Martha Ballard in 1790. Ballard epitomizes what we now classify as a “locavore,” i.e., one who relies on neighborhood food resources for sustenance.[7]

In a Kitchen Literacy chapter entitled “A Meal by Martha,” a colonial America dinner table is set:

In the center of a wooden table on a pewter platter sat a baked leg of lamb. One earthenware bowl held a heap of steaming, fresh string beans, while another contained sliced cucumbers, likely drizzled with vinegar. The table was plain, but the savory smell of the roast meat made mouths water and elevated this meal, like many simple meals, to a humbly exceptional status.

At the time, it was ordinary, but in retrospect, it seems utterly distinctive: everyone sitting at the table knew exactly where the foods came from. The lamb came from a nearby farm, while the string beans and cucumbers came from a garden just down a path out the kitchen door. [8]

Daily life in the 1790s represents a baseline for evaluating the evolution of “natural” and “organic” food labels. While some would argue that the very act of farming itself is not “natural” — involving a wholesale transformation of land and destruction of nature — it does depend on nature’s rhythms. As Ann Vileisis posits, being subjected to the seasonal cycles and the whims of nature is what really defines preindustrial food production as “natural”:

It was this aspect of farming that was most tangible to preindustrial Americans whose lives were tied so closely to the cycles of seasons and the whims of nature. The idea that farms and gardens could be anything other than part of the natural realm was to them unthinkable.

Farming in the 1790s equally qualifies as “organic.” Dealing with weeds and pests required vigilance and brute force labor in the absence of chemical herbicides and pesticides:

Weeds demanded perseverance and had to be pulled — and pulled—until the desired seedlings gained a clear advantage. After one spell when Martha was gone from home for a week delivering babies, she came back to find her garden overrun. “The weeds almost gained mastery,” she wrote in her diary, but over the course of the next week, with diligence and muscle, she managed to wrest “mastery” back from the unwanted plants. * * * .[9]

To control insect pests, many gardeners let chickens and ducks range freely among the plants during the day, or they might lay down a wilted cabbage lead or an old shingle, and then squash all of the bugs hiding under it early the next morning. Picking bugs was a job that often fell to children. For bad infestations, some gardeners applied repellent concoctions made from black walnut or tobacco leaves.[10]

The commonplace methods described for controlling weeds and pests in preindustrial America would now be recognized as organic farming techniques.

Industrial Food Processing and Marketing Deception Comes of Age

Two of the most significant impacts of food processing in the 19th century were the invention of canned food and “margarine,” a cheap substitute for and imitation of butter. Both inventions were rooted in chemical engineering advances in France and Germany.

Canning food first developed as a means to feed Napoleon’s armies. That technology came to the United States by the 1820s.[11] Both the California Gold Rush and the Civil War created market niches for “hermetically sealed foods.”[12]

In the 1860s, Emperor Napoleon III offered a prize to the person who could produce an edible fat substitute for butter.[13] In response, “Hippolyte Mege-Mouries, a French chemist, created oleomargarine, a combination of clarified beef fat, water, and a bit of tributyrin — a milk fat—to give it a buttery taste.”[14] Mege-Mouries called it oleomargarine after margaric acid, a fatty acid.

Eventually, margarine[15] would be made out of vegetable oils instead of beef fat; but it would take advances in chemical engineering — the process of hydrogenation — “to convert liquid vegetable oils into a semisolid product.”[16] Many inventors sought and received U.S. patents for their margarine formulations and processing techniques and for techniques to simulate butter color and flavor.[17]

A desire to find a cheap substitute for butter spawned the epic marketing and political food battle of the 19th and 20th centuries. Palming off margarine as butter became rampant immediately upon margarine’s introduction into the U.S. consumer marketplace in the 1870s. Margarine production produced a white product, so one relatively easy way to prevent it from competing more directly with butter was to prevent it from being colored yellow.

Dairy producing states soon passed laws prohibiting the sale of yellow-colored margarine. The marketing deception nevertheless continued and led to the enactment of federal taxation in 1886 (and later in 1902) on manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers selling white and yellow oleomargarine. The taxes were set much higher on yellow oleomargarine. Those desiring to serve yellow margarine would purchase yellow coloring agents separately and then mix it with white margarine at home. This was a time-consuming and arduous task for homemakers.

Margarine manufacturers and distributors were quick to assert that it was just as nutritious as butter. That representation lacked a valid scientific basis and eventually would be thoroughly discredited.[18] A compulsion to promote product consumption through health claims permeates the food and dietary supplement market to this day.

Canned foods and the desire to imitate butter exposed the limitation of the human senses in deciding what foodstuffs to purchase. Sight supplanted smell and touch as an arbiter of food quality. Offering a pleasing appearance for food products became a paramount marketing concern. The content of labels became a surrogate means for evaluating food quality.

In order to assuage consumer anxieties about the source of their food, producers adopted bucolic images of nature for their can labels. These early canned food labels often emphasize the purity, cleanliness and geographic source of the food. Some early 20th century examples show how food purveyors portrayed the source of food as originating from an unpolluted, untrammeled, preindustrial “natural” locale:

The desire to depict lush nature as the source of food produce was not universal, however. One California canned fruit label shows how even black belching smokestacks could serve as a symbol of industrial progress:

Passage of the Federal “Pure Food Law” in 1906

Regulating the health and welfare of U.S. citizens is generally considered to be the province of state, not federal law. Upton Sinclair’s muck-raking novel, The Jungle, almost singlehandedly changed that food regulatory landscape. First published in 1905 in serial form in the socialist newspaper Appeal to Reason, the novel exposed the unsanitary condition of Chicago meatpacking plants. It shocked readers with its scenes of workers falling into rendering vats and being ground up with animal fats to form “Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard.” This touched the raw nerve of a basic human taboo: cannibalism.

The Jungle’s exposé provide an impetus for the passage of the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906 and the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906. The former became popularly known as the Pure Food Act and sometimes as the “Wiley pure food law” in tribute to the chief proponent of the legislation, Dr. Harvey W. Wiley. This new federal law focused on adulteration and misbranding of food. The word “pure” is used in its sense of food being “free from adulterants or impurities,” rather than having “a homogeneous or uniform composition.”[19] The 1906 Act’s use of the word “pure” — not defined in the text of the Act—underscores a deep suspicion of how the industrial revolution had been altering the very composition of food placed on the table. The 1906 Act does not mention “natural” or “organic” food.

100,000,000 Guinea Pigs

Perceived deficiencies in the scope and enforcement of the Pure Food Act of 1906 are recounted in a wildly popular book in the 1930s entitled 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs: Dangers in Everyday Foods, Drugs, and Cosmetics, by Arthur Kallet and F.J. Schlink. First published in 1933, it was already in its thirtieth printing by 1935. The opening chapter is “The Great American Guinea Pig” and relates that:

In the magazines, in the newspapers, over the radio, a terrific verbal barrage has been laid down on a hundred million Americans, first, to set in motion a host of fears about their health, their stomachs, their bowels, their teeth, their throats, their looks; second, to persuade them that only by eating, drinking, gargling, brushing, or smearing with Smith’s Whole Vitamin Breakfast Food, Jones’ Yeast Cubes, Blue Giant Apples, Prussian Salts, Listroboris Mouthwash, Grandpa’s Wonder Toothpaste, and a thousand and one other foods, drinks, gargles and pastes, can they either postpone the onset of disease, of social ostracism, of business failure, or recover from ailments, physical or social, already contracted.[20]

The reference to guinea pigs reflects a basic human conundrum. We have been creating new and varied things to eat since the dawn of mankind. We like to experiment with our diets. Each of us is our own “control group” in deciding what we desire and choose to ingest. What role should government play in regulating our food choices?

In June 1938, the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act (“FDCA”) repealed much of the former Pure Food Act and created a more detailed regulatory scheme. It carried forward the 1906 Act’s emphasis on outlawing adulteration and misbranding of food. The operative paradigm of the FDCA is to provide consumers with food content information and let them decide whether the food is appropriate for them to eat.

When the FDCA was enacted in 1938, it too did not define what constitutes “natural” or “organic” food. It defines the word “food” as “(1) articles used for food or drink for man or other animals, (2) chewing gum, and (3) articles use for the components of any such article.”[21] “Processed food,” in turn, “means any food other than a raw agricultural commodity and includes any raw agricultural commodity that has been subject to processing, such as canning, cooking, freezing, dehydration, or milling.”[22]

The FDCA distinguishes food from drugs. A drug includes “articles intended for use in the diagnoses, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease in man or other animals” as well as “articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals.”[23] When food producers make unsubstantiated health claims to promote their food products, they risk having their food categorized as an unapproved, hence unlawful new “drug.”[24]

Passage of the FDCA solidified the paramount role for the federal government in regulating commerce in food. In construing the scope of its provisions, the United States Supreme Court characterized the purpose of these federal food enactments as a necessary response to modern industrialization. The consumer’s physical separation from the source or content of packaged food created a need for laws against adulteration that could not be discerned and disclosure of product constituents. Supreme Court cases encouraged a liberal application of FDCA provisions in order to comply with Congressional intent:

By the Act of 1906 … as successively strengthened, Congress exerted its power to keep impure and adulterated foods and drugs out of the channels of commerce. The purposes of this legislation, as we have said, “touch phases of lives and health of people which, in the circumstances of modern industrialism, are largely beyond self-protection. Regard for these purposes should infuse construction of the legislation if it is to be treated as a working instrument of government and not merely as a collection of English words.”[25]

The role of state laws in regulating food content and safety dwindled after the passage of the FDCA. Under the principle of federal preemption, state laws and regulations governing food would have to give way to federal law if they conflicted. Further, under the primary jurisdiction doctrine, courts could dismiss a case if a judge believed that the issue under review may or should be addressed and resolved by the federal Food and Drug Administration in the first instance.

Historically, the FDA’s response to food safety issues has been reactionary rather than proactive. New foods must be proved to be unsafe, rather than safe, for human consumption. In this sense, the operative standard is really “buyers beware.” The introduction of genetically modified organisms (“GMO”) into the food chain is a controversial case in point:

Genetically engineered foods saturate our diet today. In the US alone, over 80% of all processed foods contain them. Others include grains like rice, corn and wheat; legumes like soybeans and soy products; vegetable oils, soft drinks; salad dressings; vegetables and fruits; dairy products including eggs; meat, chicken, pork and other animal products; and even infant formula plus a vast array of hidden additives and ingredients in processed foods (like in tomato sauce, ice cream, margarine and peanut butter). Consumers don’t know what they’re eating because labeling is prohibited, yet the danger is clear. Independently conducted studies show the more of these foods we eat, the greater the potential harm to our health.

Today, consumers are kept in the dark and are part of an uncontrolled, unregulated mass human experiment the results of which are unknown. Yet, the risks are enormous, it will take years to learn them, and when we finally know it’ll be too late to reverse the damage if it’s proved conclusively that genetically engineered foods harm human health as growing numbers of independent experts believe.[26]

Whether or not health fears regarding GMO foods are justified, the same apprehension about the adulterated of food expressed in 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs in 1933 rings true today:

In considering these adulterations and their probable safety, we must consider that the human stomach evolved in a world stocked with game, eggs, milk, fruits, berries, cereals, and seeds, vegetables, and a very limited supply of natural sweets like honey—no sulphur dioxide, no sulphate of soda, no glucose, no alum, no aniline dyes, no benzoate of soda, no liquid, “artificial smoke” for curing ham and bacon, no frozen meats or eggs, or bleached or denatured flour. The only race of beings that can successfully live and breed on adulterated and sophisticated products is one which has spent its period of evolution in a chemical plant and fed from among dye vats, crucibles, acid carboys, desiccators, stills, and sulphurizers. And we who now live on this planet are not that race.[27]

The anxiety about eating food that may be toxic to our health reinforces a consumer desire to only consume “natural” and “organic” foods. Presumably, only such foods enjoy the historical track record of being healthy and safe to consume (putting aside the grave risks of salmonella, listeria and E. coli contamination and the like in processing food from farm to table).

The desire to only eat “healthy” food perhaps can become obsessive and even lead to a condition some in the psychological community have termed “orthorexia nervosa.” However, that eating disorder is not recognized as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, nor is it included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders IV (2006). Those afflicted with orthorexia nervosa purportedly become fixated on “righteous eating” and set rigid rules about avoiding certain foods.[28] As one author put it, these “dietary restrictions commonly cause sufferers to feel proud of their ‘virtuous’ behavior even if it means that eating becomes so stressful their personal relationships can come under pressure and they become socially isolated.”[29] This may well be just another instance of “therapy” terminology permeating discourse of all subjects in American culture. The attitudes described as indicative of a possible eating disorder are equally consistent with taking a highly ethical, moral and political stand with respect to one’s food consumption.

“Tuesday is Soylent Green Day” and the Growth of an Organic Food Movement

To better grasp and understand the passionate roots of the “organic” food movement, a brief foray into American popular culture is illuminating. 1973 was a watershed year. President Richard Nixon proclaimed that “peace with honor” would soon be at hand. With the Vietnam War no longer a focal point for the “protest” movement, the country’s attention turned back to a litany of ecological calamities recounted so vividly by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring (1962). E. F. “Fritz” “Schumacher’s book Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered was published and would become a best seller.

Soylent Green hit the silver screen in 1973. Set in the year 2022 in New York City, it portrays the culmination of our Earth’s degradation. Store shelves and cupboards are bare and empty. Overpopulation is rampant. People sleep in stairwells, dress in Soviet-style peasant garb, and mill about listlessly in automaton fashion. Fresh fruits and vegetables and Grade A cuts of meat no longer exist for the masses; only the wealthy elite can get their hands on them.

The populace instead consumes food wafers manufactured by the Soylent Corporation.[30] Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow are advertised as “high energy vegetable concentrates.” A newer and much more popular foodstuff is Soylent Green, supposedly produced from “high-energy plankton.”[31]

Tuesdays are Soylent Green days and New Yorkers queue up for their wafer rations. When those waiting in line all day are denied their aliquot portions of Soylent Green, riots break out. Huge front end loading bulldozers emerge to scoop up protestors, dump them into police trucks and cart them away, like so much street detritus.

Assisted suicide becomes a desirable way to end one’s miserable existence in these end times. At the government-run euthanasia facilities, it is called “going home.” After selecting a lighting scheme and choosing the music you wish to hear as you die, you are escorted to a private room and bed by employees dressed in vaguely religious vestments. In Socratic fashion, you drink a poisonous concoction, lie down on a comfortable bed, and then spend your final twenty minutes of life witnessing — in IMAX-panoramic fashion — scenes of a pristine Earth where streams and rivers run free and the deer and antelope play.

Unbeknownst to everyone except for some high-level executives of the Soylent Corporation and a small group of intellectuals (who meet in a library of old books called the “supreme exchange”), the world’s plankton population had collapsed. To remedy this, the Soylent Corporation began using cadavers from the euthanasia centers as the protein ingredient for the popular Soylent Green.

When the protagonist of the film — a police detective named Robert Thorn (played by Charlton Heston)—confirms this fact for himself, he becomes the film’s “prophet of doom.” Having stripped the Earth of its natural resources through pollution and overpopulation, man is now cannibalizing man. In the final scenes of the film, he screams out to anyone who will listen that the Soylent Corporation “raises humans like cattle” and that “Soylent Green is people.”

With its taboo theme of cannibalism — akin to that exposed in The Jungle in 1906 — and portrayal of massive environmental degradation, Soylent Green serves as a stark counterpoint to the hopes and dreams of a nascent organic food movement. Small groups began to coalesce around the idea of returning to organic cultivation methods. They collectively decided to wean themselves off industrialized farming methods and its overwhelming reliance on the use of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and petroleum-based fertilizers. Taste and health drove their decisions to “return to the earth.”

Wendell Berry would fuel the collective disgust of the “anti-establishment” with industrial scale farming methods at the 1974 World’s Fair in Spokane, Washington. His speech during an “Agriculture for a Small Planet” symposium rocked the house. He bemoaned the loss of small farm culture and declared a Declaration of Independence from conventional agricultural methods. He tapped into an intense distrust of science and the “military-industrial complex,” which gave us such chemical defoliants as Agent Orange, by stating that “one of the miracles of science is that the germs that used to be in our food have been replaced by poisons.”[32]

Originally considered to be made up of “farmers on the fringes,” a number of these groups are now largely responsible for certifying that the food we purchase and consume is “organic.” A case in point is the formation of the “Tilth Producer’s Cooperative.” On grainy archive photos taken in August 1977, Becky Deryckx is sitting on top of a 1947 Farmall A tractor. Gathered around Becky are 70 or so people dressed mostly in plaid flannel shirts and jeans. They are a youngish, scruffy-looking group. Their hair is long and in braids or ponytails or covered by handkerchiefs.

They all migrate to the Pragtree Farm near Arlington, Washington, to discuss a new/old way to approach farming and food production. Becky explains how the word “tilth” refers to the quality of the soil; and, in an older sense of the word, also describes the cultivation of knowledge and wisdom. Perhaps without even realizing it, they are launching what would become the most influential organic food organization in the United States.[33]

To capture the flavor of what these organic pioneers were up against, put yourself in Patrick Langon’s shoes for a moment.[34] It is Sunday morning in early June 1973. You own a small three acre farm near Yakima, Washington. You are up early irrigating your crop of organic tomatoes, beans, garlic, cucumbers and Jerusalem artichokes. You intend to bring them to market as rare organic produce. You happen to be the president of the Northwest Organic Food Producers Association (“NOFPA”). Your neighbors, the Thalheimers, however, are not. They raise potatoes on their farm in conventional fashion.

Overhead, you hear and then see a helicopter coming toward you. It is spraying chemical pesticides over the Thalheimer’s farm. You later learn they are Thiodan® — to control against a Colorado beetle infestation—and (the now banned) Guthion.[35] The pilot doesn’t seem to see you and before you know it, a chemical mist blankets you from head to toe. The material safety data sheet for Thiodan warns that it “is highly toxic if absorbed through the skin or inhaled.” Symptoms include headache, weakness, abdominal cramps, nausea, excessive salivation, perspiration, blurred vision, tearing, pin-point pupils, convulsions, tremor and coma.[36]

The pilot sprays all of your carefully tended rows of sprouting plants. Your wife Dorothy laments, “it has reached the point of insanity,” referring to indiscriminate spraying of herbicides and pesticides in the Yakima Valley. As she puts it, “anyone can drive down this valley early any morning and see what utter disregard the crop dusters have for one and all.”

Your entire organic crop is ruined. Pursuant to NOFPA bylaws, no member can market foods or advertise food as organic if laboratory tests on the finished crop show the presence of more than ten percent (10%) of the maximum pesticide residue tolerances allowable by the Food and Drug Administration.

The Seemingly Innocuous Passage of Washington State’s Organic Food Law in 1985

You know I love that organic cooking
I always ask for more
And they call me Mr. Natural
On down to the health food store
I only eat good sea salt
White sugar don’t touch my lips
And my friends are always begging me
To take them on macrobiotic trips
Yes, they are

Oh, but at night I stake out my strong box
That I keep under lock and key
And I take it off to my closet
Where nobody else can see
I open that door so slowly
Take a peek up north and south
Then I pull out a Hostess Twinkie
And I pop it in my mouth

Junk Food Junkie, by Larry Croce

Larry Croce’s novelty song Junk Food Junkie captured the schizophrenic national mood regarding the consumption of organic food. It reached No. 9 on the Billboard charts in February 1976. It was easy to dismiss the desire for organic food as a cause célèbre of a harmless counterculture “hippie” fringe group.

An atmospheric feeling of “let’s throw them a bone” animates the discussion of Washington legislators regarding SHB 297, a bill “establishing standards for organic food products.” The following legislative colloquy regarding a one year transition period for not using pesticides is instructive:

Senator Hansen: “…Personally, I’m not going out to try and raise organic foods, but there are people out there who are serious about it and they have all agreed to this termination [regarding how much time it will take for agricultural lands to be deemed organic after prior use of pesticides], so why should I take opposition to it if they’ve agreed to it?

Senator Rasmussen: “What you’re saying it that it doesn’t make a bit of difference whether it’s organic or not, but we should pass the bill, maybe?”

Senator Hansen: “If it makes them feel better, as far as I’m concerned, if this achieves their goals, then why should I take objection to it.”

[Further colloquy]

Senator Rasmussen: “Thank you, Senator Hansen. It has been an advantage to have a farmer here that knows organic foods.”[37]

The committee report for SHB 297 summarized the proposed legislation as precluding a producer or vendor from selling or offering to sell any food product with the representation that the product is an organic food if the producer or vendor knows, or has reason to know, that the food was grown or raised with any of the following substances:

• Fertilizers by excluding manure and other natural fertilizers;
• Manufactured pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, or growth stimulants;
• Arsenicals, i.e., a drug or preparation containing arsenic; or
• Similar substances listed by the Department of Agriculture.[38]

The SHB 297 Committee Report (“Report”) notes that the Director of Agriculture has administrative power to enforce the Act through injunctive relief and civil fines. Importantly, the Report states that a “violation of these requirements regarding organic food also constitutes a violation of the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act which declares unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of trade or commerce to be unlawful.” The Report reiterates that the Consumer Protection Act “permits the court to award attorney’s fees and damages in an amount not exceeding three times actual damages in certain circumstances.”[39] Both the House and Senate passed SHB 297 and it is now codified as RCW Ch. 15.86.

Alaska and Oregon also enacted organic food legislation. Oregon followed a different tack in enacting its organic food law in 1989. Like most other state organic food laws—with the notable exceptions of Washington and Alaska — Oregon’s short-lived law did not provide private individuals with a right to sue for organic certification violations. Former ORS § 616.900 imposed only civil penalties that were to be enforced by the Director of Agriculture. All in all, 29 states enacted some form of organic food law.

Federal Organic Food Laws Trump State Laws

The growing patchwork of state organic food laws led to calls for the enactment of a uniform federal law governing organic food production and promotion. This ultimately culminated in the passage of the federal Organic Food Production Act of 1990.[40] It was promulgated in order to (1) “establish national standards governing the marketing” of organically produced agricultural products, (2) “assure consumers that organically produced products meet a consistent standard,” and (3) “facilitate interstate commerce in fresh and processed food that is organically produced.”[41]

Under the regulatory authority granted by the Act, the United States Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) established a National Organic Program of approved and prohibited substances for the production and handling of organic products which went into effect in 2002. Certified compliance with the USDA allows an organic producer or processor to use the USDA’s green organic seal. That seal is now the ubiquitous symbol of organic food.

Under the federal Act, both states and private organizations can serve as organic certifying agents.[42] State certification programs may “contain more restrictive requirements governing the organic certification of farms and handling operations,” but any additional requirements shall further “the purposes of” and not “be inconsistent with” the federal organic products legislation.[43] Pursuant to the Act, both the Washington State Department of Agriculture (“WSDA”) and Oregon Tilth, Inc., headquartered in Corvallis, Oregon, are now accredited certifying agents. Those meeting WSDA or Oregon Tilth organic certification requirements are permitted to affix their respective individual logos to their food products.

A key dividing point between federal and state regulation of organic food products is whether individual consumers and product competitors are entitled to bring private lawsuits against those who violate the guarantees wrapped up in an organic food logo. Federal law includes no private right of action for aggrieved consumers. It instead relies on a host of civil penalties and decertification remedies as enforcement mechanisms. Alaska and Washington organic food laws specifically allow individuals to file consumer protection act claims against those who violate organic food certification standards.[44] (In contrast, Oregon law is silent on this point.)

The availability of consumer protection act claims and remedies should provide financial incentives for pursuing class action litigation on behalf of consumers harmed by false or misleading organic food representations. Prevailing parties can recover attorneys’ fees and potentially, exemplary damages. Recovery of “emotional distress” and “mental anguish” damages can present difficult claim and proof issues, since consumer protection act claims limit a damages recovery to injuries to one’s business or property.[45]

Recovering the amount paid for food products whose organic or natural representations are false or misleading involves a relatively straightforward damages analysis. The more intractable claim and proof issues arise from an aggrieved purchaser’s disappointment and emotional response to consuming food that may well violate one’s moral or ethical beliefs. Courts have a difficult time evaluating such damage claims. Loss of enjoyment of food can be recoverable as “hedonic” damages in personal injury cases.[46] Plaintiffs will need to allege state law tort claims for mental anguish and emotional distress to seek such damages. These types of personal injury claims are not generally amenable to class action resolution since they raise issues of fact peculiar to each claimant.

Defendants targeted in Washington and Alaska organic food class actions may argue that private state law claims are preempted as “inconsistent” with the purposes of federal organic food legislation. There is no controlling case law on this point. More generally, the leading case confronting “organic” federal preemption issues is In re Aurora Dairy Corp. Organic Milk Marketing and Sales Practices Litigation.[47] The case concerned whether milk produced from Aurora Dairy Corporation’s dairy farm was properly certified and labeled as “organic.” Various class action plaintiffs sued Aurora, the organic certifying agent (“QAI, Inc.”), and retailers selling the milk, including Costco, Safeway, Target and Wild Oats Markets. These retail stores sold Aurora milk under their own private labels.

The plaintiffs contended that Aurora’s milk was not organic and that the defendants made other misleading representations violating state consumer protection laws. For example, several cartons “featured depictions of pastoral scenes with cows grazing in pastures, and advertised the idyllic conditions under which the dairy cows lived.”[48] In an article appearing in Costco Connection magazine, the company represented that the “cows on the farm have quite the life. They feed on a balanced vegan diet and have access to organic pastures for grazing.”[49]

The Aurora federal appeals court held that the plaintiffs’ state law claims based on the “organic” food certification and label themselves were preempted by Organic Food Production Act of 1990 and its regulations, promulgated as the National Organic Program (“NOP”).

The Aurora appeals court determined the state law consumer protection act claims based on the following types of representations were not preempted:

The class plaintiffs alleged Aurora engaged in deceptive advertising practices, by, among other things, “misrepresenting the manner in which its dairy cows were raised and fed,” and “suppressing or omitting material facts regarding the production of its ‘organic’ milk or milk products, specifically that … the dairy cows were not raised at pasture.” This claim sufficiently states a cause of action at this stage of the proceedings.[50]

The key to avoiding federal preemption in misrepresentation in cases regarding “organic” food is not relying on violations of federal NOP certification process in framing complaint allegations. The Aurora appeals court decided that:

To the extent the class plaintiffs, relying on state consumer protection or tort law, seek to set aside Aurora’s [organic]certification, or seek damages from any party for Aurora’s milk being labeled as organic in accordance with the certification, we hold that state law conflicts with federal law and should be preempted. Accordingly, we affirm the dismissal of the class plaintiffs’ claims based on Aurora’s and the retailers’ marketing, representing, and selling milk as organic when, allegedly, it was not.[51]

The National Organic Program has its ardent critics. Ceding control over food quality and characteristics to faraway bureaucracies and the lobbyists of multinational corporations, organic purists argue, leads to watered-down, defanged organic food regulations. Arctic Organics — an Alaskan company that produces organic food but which eschews USDA organic certification — frames the issue this way:

Our philosophical aversion to being certified by the NOP [National Organic Program]is easily explained. The NOP is constantly pressured by large agribusinesses that spend enormous amounts of lobbying money to change standards so that they can take part in the success achieved through true organic production—including success in the marketplace which organic farmers have worked hard to accomplish over several decades. For example, under the NOP, it is now possible to feed nonorganic feed to livestock and sell the meat as “organic,” and poultry is no longer required to have access to the outdoors for foraging and exercise.

Arctic Organics website.[52] www.arcticorganics.com

The growing “locavore” movement regards mass-produced food with disfavor and distrust. Federal regulation of organic foods can be viewed as an antithesis of locavore ideals. It opens up American markets to the importation of allegedly “organic” food in regions of the world (particularly China) where the organic inspection standards may be faulty or corrupt.[53]

To summarize, in the space of about 40 years, organic food went from being a niche, specialty item produced by “farmers on the fringe” to its present status as well-recognized products subject to detailed federal and state law and regulations.

“Natural” Foods Follow a Different “Policy” Regulatory Path

In contrast to “organic” food, there are no binding federal regulations governing the use of “natural” food labels, only federally issued “policy” advice. The absence of federal regulation is significant because it undermines federal preemption and primary jurisdiction arguments in cases discussed in more detail below and opens the door to lawsuits based on state law.

The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) first attempted to define the term “natural” in the mid 1970s and concluded it was unable to establish a definition or meaning of the term in 1983. The FTC decided to pursue the issue on a case-by-case basis. A statement from the Chairman of the FTC observed that:

The proposed [abandoned]rule would also define “natural” foods as those with no artificial ingredients and only minimal processing. Quite aside from the significant difficulties that would be posed in enforcing this rule, a fundamental problem exists by virtue of the fact that the context in which “natural” is used determines its meaning. It is unlikely that consumers expect the same thing from a natural apple as they do natural ice cream. The proposed rule assumes, without any evidence, that “natural” means the same thing in every context. We should concentrate our resources on more serious consumer protection problems than whether a claim that “milk is natural” is deceptive.[54]

Likewise, the FDA first attempted to define the term “natural” in 1989 and abandoned that effort in 1993. The FDA stated that it would maintain its policy of defining “natural” as meaning “that nothing artificial or synthetic (including all color additives regardless of source) has been included in, or has been added to, a food that would not normally be expected to be in the food.”[55]

Like the FDA, the USDA has issued policy advice with respect to the use of the term “natural.” The USDA’s Food Standards and Labeling Policy Book informs the reader that the word “natural” may be used on labeling for meat and poultry products if (1) the product doesn’t contain any artificial flavor or flavoring, coloring ingredient or any other artificial or synthetic ingredient; and (2) the product and its ingredients are not more than minimally processed.[56] With respect to what constitutes minimal processing, USDA policy relates in part that:

Minimal processing may include: (a) those traditional processes used to make food edible or to preserve it or to make it safe for human consumption, e.g., smoking, roasting, freezing, drying, and fermenting, or (b) those processes which do not fundamentally alter the raw product and/or which only separate a whole, intact food into component parts, e.g., grinding meats, separating eggs into albumen and yolk, and pressing fruits to produce juices. Relatively severe processes, e.g., solvent extraction, acid hydrolysis, and chemical bleaching would clearly be considered more than minimal processing. …

All products claiming to be natural or a natural food product should be accompanied by a brief statement which explains what is meant by the term natural, i.e., that the product is a natural food product because it contains no artificial ingredients and is only minimally processed. The statement should appear directly beneath or beside all natural claims or, if elsewhere on the principal display panel; an asterisk should be used to tie the explanation to the claim.[57]

In September 2009, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking on the use of the voluntary claim of “natural” in the labeling of meat and poultry products. No formal rulemaking has yet occurred in response to the FSIS notice. Earlier in 2009, the USDA also issued a voluntary standard for “naturally raised” livestock and meat marketing claims. Essentially, to make the “naturally raised” marketing claim, the meat and meat products must have been raised entirely without growth promotants, antibiotics (with some exceptions), and have never been fed animal by-products.[58]

The absence of binding federal regulations governing the use of “natural” food representations, however, does not prevent the FDA from issuing “warning letters” to producers who misuse an “all-natural” representation. A November 2011 letter from the FDA to Alexia Foods is a prime example. It reads in part:

Your Alexia brand Roasted Red Potatoes & Baby Portabella Mushrooms product is misbranded within the meaning of section 403(a)(1) of the Act [21 U.S.C. 343(a)(1)], which states that food shall be deemed to be misbranded if its labeling is false and misleading in any particular. The phrase “All Natural” appears at the top of the principal display panel on the label. The FDA considers use of the term “natural” on a food label to be truthful and non-misleading when “nothing artificial or synthetic . . . has been included in, or has been added to, a food that would not normally be expected to be in the food.” [58 FR 2302, 2407, January 6, 1993].

Your Alexia brand Roasted Red Potatoes & Baby Portabella Mushrooms product contains disodium dihydrogen pyrophosphate, which is a synthetic chemical preservative. Because your products contain this synthetic ingredient, the use of the claim “All Natural” on this product label is false and misleading, and therefore your product is misbranded under section 403(a)(1) of the Act.[59]

Despite its regulatory oversight, an FDA warning letter is not a “final agency action” as defined under the federal Administrative Procedures Act. Instead, it is a “tentative or interlocutory action” which does not constitute a final agency action.[60] The non-binding nature of the warning letter means the target’s right to seek judicial review of the allegations is circumscribed and limited.

The absence of definitive federal law or regulations regarding proper use of “natural” food representations is a boon for state consumer protection act litigation. In recent years, a host of class action complaints have been filed against food producers regarding their use of the word
“natural” in product labels. For example, a recently filed class action complaint against Kashi Company, and Kellogg Company (which owns Kashi) alleges these defendants “inserted a spectacular array of unnaturally processed and synthetic ingredients to its so-called “all natural” products.”[61] The complaint alleged that Kashi’s “All Natural” GoLean shakes are composed almost entirely of synthetic and unnaturally processed ingredients including sodium molybdate, phytonadione, sodium selenite, magnesium phosphate and a host of other ingredients that have been declared to be synthetic substances under federal regulations.[62]

The Kashi case joins a growing list of state law class actions. A number of these cases raise the issue of whether high fructose corn syrup (“HFCS”) or other processed ingredients qualify as “natural” ingredients. See, e.g., Lockwood v. Conagra Foods, Inc. (allegation that defendant engaged in misleading conduct by advertising its “Healthy Choice’ pasta sauce as “all natural” when it in fact included HFCS); Astiana v. Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, Inc. (allegation that defendants misrepresented ice cream containing “Dutch” or “alkalized” cocoa as “all natural”); Ries v. Hornell Brewing Co. (allegation that AriZona Ice Tea bearing the words “100% All Natural” was misleading because the drink included HFCS).[63]

Attempts by defendants to have these claims dismissed under the primary jurisdiction doctrine — so that the FDA can review the “all natural” food label claims — were initially persuasive to a number of federal district court judges. Such challenges have not been ultimately successful in resolving these cases, however. In one case where the “Is HFCS natural?” claim was stayed pursuant to the primary jurisdiction doctrine, the FDA informed the presiding judge that it would not make an administrative determination whether HFCS qualifies as a “natural” ingredient.” The FDA’s reasoning, in part, was as follows:

First, for the FDA to resolve whether HFCS qualifies as a “natural” ingredient in defendants’ beverages, in the absence of a pre-existing regulatory definition, the agency would expect to act in a transparent manner by engaging in a public proceeding to establish the meaning of this term. Given the issues involved, making such a determination without adequate public participation would raise questions about the fairness of FDA’s action. FDA’s experience with such proceedings is that they would take two to three years to complete. We recognize that such a timeframe would likely not be useful to the Court in resolving the current case.

Second, priority food safety and applied nutrition matters are currently fully occupying the resources that FDA has available for public proceedings on food matters. … Proceedings to define “natural” do not fit within these current priorities.[64]

For the time being, there appears to be little bureaucratic appetite for issuing anything other than policy advice regarding use of “natural” in food promotion representations. The issue of when it is appropriate to label food as “natural” will continue to be litigated through false advertising and consumer protection act claims on a case-by-case basis. The risk of significant litigation exposure may temper the zeal of food producers and marketers to include the moniker “all natural” or portray misleading pastoral scenes on their brand labels.

Conclusion

Perceptions matter in choosing what to eat. If we believe our foodstuffs come from a natural or organic source, we intrinsically believe they will be better and more nutritious for us. The intense historical battle over whether margarine could be colored yellow to look like butter demonstrates the vital importance of appearances. During 1943 Congressional hearings on repealing the federal margarine tax, Elizabeth Schorske (representing the League of Women Shoppers) acknowledged that while adding color to margarine did not add any nutritive value, it does increase “the psychological goodness of it. I think you enjoy it more if it is colored. I know I do.”[65] The same can be said of organic and natural foods. The emotive power of these two words ensures their continued vitality as descriptions of food quality.

Notes

[1] M. Nestle, What to Eat (2006), p. 4.

[2] The American Heritage College Dictionary (3rd Ed. 1997), p. 908.

[3] The American Heritage College Dictionary (3rd Ed. 1997), p. 962.

[4] T. DeGregori, Bountiful Harvest: Technology, Food Safety and the Environment (2002), p. 90.

[5] See generally, R. Deliza and H.J.H. MacFie, “The Generation of Sensory Expectations by External Cues and Its Effect on Sensory Perception and Hedonic Ratings: A Review,” 11 J. of Sensory Perceptions (1996), 103-128.

The number of studies seeking to determine whether organic food tastes better or is more nutritious is rapidly expanding. Unfortunately, the research methodologies employed in these studies generally rely on a limited set of variables as surrogates for determining what constitutes “good taste” or is deemed to be “nutritious.” Good taste is conflated into the presence (or not) of certain chemical compositions and nutrition is measured by the presence or absence of trace minerals. While these may be useful surrogates for analyzing nutrition, the academic challenge of the 21^st century will be to study the complex physio-psycho-social interactions that appear to be much more explanatory of taste and nutrition. This will necessarily require a cross-disciplinary analysis involving the fields of physiology and psychology and even sociology.

[6] Like many Rockwell paintings, Normal Rockwell Visits a County Agent first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, in this case on July 24, 1948.

[7] The author Michael Pollan is credited with making the term “locavore” a recognized food concept. His invaluable books explore our relationship to the production and consumption of food in many fascinating and subtle ways.

[8] A. Vileisis, Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get It Back (2008), p. 32.

[9] Id., p. 20.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Id., p. 74.

[12] Id., p. 75.

[13] L. Dalton, 82 Chemical & Engineering News 33, p. 24 (August 16, 2004), accessed on 12/29/11 at http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/8233margarine.html.

[14] Ibid.

[15] When the name “oleomargarine” was first coined, the “oleo” prefix referred to the fact that margarine was being manufactured with beef fat. However, by the 1940s, much of oleomargarine was being manufactured with the use of vegetable oils, and technically, the “oleo” prefix did not apply. During Congressional hearings in the 1940s, legislators and witnesses began to use the words “oleomargarine” and “margarine” interchangeably.

[16] Ibid.

[17] See, e.g., U.S. Patent No. 153,999, entitled “Improvement in Processes for Separating Oleomargarine and Stearine from Animal Fat” (issued on August 11, 1874); U.S. Patent No. 1,649,821, entitled “Powdered Butter Coloring for Butter and Oleomargarine” (issued on November 22, 1927); and U.S. Patent No. 3,940,504, entitled “Oleomargarine with Yellow Food Coloring” (issued on February 24, 1976).

[18]The rapid increase in margarine consumption in place of butter in Denmark during World War I, for example, led to an epidemic of Vitamin A deficiency, which can result in such diseases as “night blindness” and corneal ulcers. Margarine producers then began fortifying it with Vitamin A. The following interchange during Congressional hearings in 1943 on whether to repeal the federal oleomargarine tax is illuminating:

Mr. Murray. I just want to call your attention to this: Up until 1938, not much of it [margarine]was fortified, or it was not fortified until 1938, to any great extent, and then anyone who has said that oleomargarine is as good as butter, was not making a scientifically accurate statement; that was not a scientific fact?

Dr. Gunderson. May we state it in terms of 1943, that in light of present knowledge and practice, this summary as I have read it, I think is a fair statement of the case.

Mr. Murray. In other words, the Oleomargarine Trust then up until 1938 was trying to tell the American public that oleo was as good as butter, and that was not the fact. It was not a scientific fact. * * * .

Vol 8, Legislative History of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, p. 40 (accessed through http://heinonline.org).

[19] The American Heritage College Dictionary (3rd ed. 1997), p. 1110.

[20] A. Kallet and F.J. Schlink, 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs: Dangers in Everyday Foods, Drugs, and Cosmetics (1933), p. 3.

[21] 21 U.S.C. § 321(f).

[22] 21 U.S.C. § 321(gg).

[23] 21 U.S.C. § 321(g)(1)(B) and (C).

[24]See, e.g, United States v. Hohensee, 243 F.2d 367 (3rd Cir. 1957)(peppermint tea leaves and wheat germ oil were drugs when promoted to cure and prevent diseases); United States v. Vital Health Prods., Ltd., 786 F.Supp. 761, 772 (E.D. Wis. 1992), aff’d sub nom. United States v. Lebeau, 985 F.2d 563 (7th Cir. 1993)(“White Birch Mineral Water” and “Licorice Root Tea” reported to possess curative powers were drugs); Hanson v. United States, 417 F. Supp. 30, 34-35 (D. Minn. 1976)(extraction from the kernels of apricot pits marketed to treat cancer is a drug when “peddled for the intended uses set forth in the statute”); United States v. 250 Jars, etc., of U.S. Fancy Pure Honey, 218 F. Supp. 208 (E.D. Mich. 1963) aff’d, 344 F.2d 288 (6th Cir. 1965)(honey promoted as “a panacea for various diseases and ailments” is a drug; “The fact that the seized honey is a food cannot take it out of the statutory definition of the word ‘drug,’ since such honey was intended to be used in the capacity of a drug.”).

[25] 62 Cases of Jam v. United States, 340 U.S. 583, 596 (1950), quoting United States v. Dotterweich, 320 U.S. 277, 280 (1943).

[26] S. Lendman, “Potential Health Hazards of Genetically Engineered Foods,” (dated February 22, 2008), Centre for Research on Globalization, accessed on 1/10/12 at http://www.globalresearch.ca/indix.php?context,+va&aid+8148.

[27] A. Kallet and F.J. Schlink, 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs: Dangers in Everyday Foods, Drugs, and Cosmetics (1933), pp. 286-87.

[28]A. Hill, “Healthy food obsession sparks rise in new eating disorder,” The Guardian/The Observer (August 15, 2009), accessed on 1/9/12 at http://www/guardian.co.uk/society/2009/aug/16/orthorexia-mential-health-eating-disorder.

[29] Ibid.

[30] The name is an anagram, “soy” for “soybeans” and “lent” for “lentils.” The text description of Soylent Green is drawn from my recent viewing of the film and Wikipedia’s entry for the film, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green.

[31] In a spoof of the film, a company now manufactures and sells “Soylent Green” crackers and promotes them as “All Natural.”

[32] Dan Sullivan, “Time for Change: The Story of Tilth’s Remarkable Birth also Charts the Beginnings of the Sustainable Agricultural Movement,” Rodale Institute (January 27, 2005), available at http://www.newfarm.org/features/2005/0105/tilth/history.shtml.

[33] Mark Musick, “A New Beginning,” Tilth Producers Quarterly: A Journal of Organic and Sustainable Agriculture (Winter 1977), p. 1.

[34] This narrative is based on the facts described in Langon v. Valicopters, Inc., 88 Wn.2d 855, 857, 567 P.2d 218 (1977) and “Langons Win Pesticide Case,” Tilth Producers Quarterly: A Journal of Organic and Sustainable Agriculture (Summer 1975).

[35]“Guthion, also called azinphos-methyl, is an organophosphorous pesticide that was used on many crops, especially apples, pears, cherries, peaches, almonds, and cotton. Many of its former uses have been cancelled by the EPA, and its few remaining uses are currently in the process of being phased out.” From ToxFAQs, available at http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts188.html#bookmark05 (accessed July 16, 2008). This website is maintained by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (“ATSDR”), which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. According to the ATSDR, “Guthion interferes with the normal way that the nerves and brain function. Exposure to very high levels of Guthion for a short period in air, water, or food may cause difficulty breathing, chest tightness, vomiting, cramps, diarrhea, blurred vision, sweating, headaches, dizziness, loss of consciousness, and death. If persons who are exposed to high amounts of Guthion are rapidly given appropriate treatment, there may be no long-term harmful effects.” Id.

[36] From Material Safety Data Sheet for Thiodan 2 EC (dated 9/9/99). The principal ingredient in Thiodan is endosulfin, which the MSDS states is highly toxic to fish.

[37] Washington State Senate Journal, Vol. 1, p. 1458 (49th Leg., 1985).

[38] SHB 297 Committee Report, p. 91-92.

[39] Ibid.

[40] The Organic Food Production Act of 1990 is codified at 7 U.S.C. § 6501 et seq. This Act required that the United States Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) develop national standards for organic products. Pursuant to this mandate, the National Organic Program (the “NOP”) instituted rules and regulations for organic food and its handling. The permitted use of the green USDA certification mark is regulated by the NOP.

[41] 7 U.S.C. § 6501.

[42] See 7 U.S.C. § 6507 (“State organic certification program”) and § 6514 (“Accreditation program”).

[43] 7 U.S.C. § 6507(b)(1) and (2).

[44] Under Washington’s “Organic Food Product” law, RCW 15.86.030, a producer, processor or handler shall not represent, sell, or offer for sale any food product with the representation that the product is an organic food if that person knows or has reason to know that the food has not been produced, processed or handled in accordance with standards established by the National Organic Program. A violation of RCW 15.86.030 constitutes “an unfair method of competition and unfair or deceptive act or practice” pursuant to RCW 19.86.023.

Similarly, a violation of Alaska’s organic food law, AS 17.06.010, is also an unfair and deceptive act pursuant to AS 45.50.471(47) and can give rise to a private cause of action pursuant to AS 45.50.531(a).

[45] See, e.g., RCW 19.86.080 (“Any person who is injured in his or her business or property by a violation [of Washington’s consumer protection act] … may bring a civil action in superior court to enjoin further violations, to recover the actual damages sustained by him or her, or both, together with the costs of the suit, including a reasonable attorney’s fee, and the court may in its discretion, increase the award of damages to an amount not to exceed three times the actual damages sustained …”; italics added).

[46]“One does not need to be a gourmand or gourmet to conclude that the consumption of food and drink represents a not inconsiderable portion of man’s enjoyment of life. To be deprived of the capacity to enjoy flavorful dishes and palatable beverages is to be robbed of much of what goes into a rewarding existence because, with the ‘inner man’ satisfied, one can work with greater zest in the accomplishment of his chosen tasks and in making his contribution to the happiness of those dependent upon him and mankind in general. The defendant has lost much of the desire for the table because he can detect no difference in food. Whether it be the rarest delicacies or the commonest kind of provender which he eats, he tastes only sawdust.” Daugherty v. Erie R. Co., 403 Pa. 334, 340, 169 A.2d 549, 552 (1961).

[47] 621 F.3d 781 (8th Cir. 2010).

[48] Id., pp. 789-90.

[49] Id., p. 790.

[50] Id., p. 799.

[51] Id., p. 797.

[52] See http://www.arcticorganics.com/organic-certification.htm.

[53]The title to one article frames the issue: Is Your Organic Food Really Organic? (available at http://www.alternet.org/environment/94146/is_your_organic_food_really_organic). The article discusses the fact that 15 out of 30 federally accredited organic certifiers had been put on probation due to their shoddy certification practices, especially as they relate to food imported from China. The article notes, “Even if a Chinese inspector notices illegal pesticide use, he or she might feel pressured to stay silent,” says Dr. Robert E. Hegel, professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. “Everybody there is so proud of increased production that few people ask much about the farmer’s production methods,” he states. “And there’s no ‘organic’ food tradition in China.” According to Hegel, in China “everything was just ‘food’ and it was, until the 1950s, mostly ‘organic’ by our contemporary definitions—fertilized with human and animal waste, compost . . . and ashes.”

[54] 48 Fed. Reg. 23,270 (May 24, 1983).

[55] 58 Fed. Reg. 2302, 2407 (January 6, 1993).

[56] USDA, Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), Food Standards and Labeling Policy Book (revised for Web publication, August 2005). Note that the primary difference between FSIS meat labeling regulations and FDA food label regulations is that meat and poultry producers must submit their label claims to the FSIS before they can be marketed, whereas producers of other foods do not have to submit their labels to the FDA for pre-approval.

[57] Ibid.

[58] USDA Agricultural Marketing Service Press Release, AMS No. 008-09 (dated January 9, 2009).

[59] This FDA Warning Letter is available online. See http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetters/ucm281118.htm.

[60] Schering-Plough Healthcare Prods., Inc. v. Schwarz Pharma, Inc., 547 F. Supp.2d 939, 946 (E.D. Wis. 2008) (the opinions of the FDA officials who wrote the letter that the defendants’ products were misbranded were not final agency actions); Genendo Pharmaceutical v. Thompson, 308 F. Supp.2d 881, 885 (N.D. Ill. 2003)(statements of FDA officials in warning letter do not constitute final agency action).

[61] Class Action Complaint (filed August 24, 2011), ¶ 3 in Bates v. Kashi Co, et al. Case No. 3:11-cv-01967 (U.S.D.C. S.D. Cal.).

[62] Ibid.

[63] See Lockwood v. Conagra Foods, Inc., 597 F. Supp.2d 1028 (N.D. Cal. 2009); Astiana v. Ben & Jerry’s Homemade, Inc., 2011 WL 2111796 (N.D. Cal. 2011); Ries v. Hornell Brewing Co., 2010 WL 2943860 (N.D. Cal. 2010).

[64] FDA Letter to Hon. Jerome B. Simandle (dated September 16, 2010) regarding Coyle v. Hornell Brewing Co. Inc.

[65] Testimony of Elizabeth Schorske, representing the League of Women Shoppers. Vol. 8, Legislative History of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, p. 254 (accessed through http://heinonline.org).